Across Britain, a lot of towns and villages have all sorts of strange, old traditions
for Bonfire Night, on November the 5th.
Most of those traditions involve fire, pyrotechnics,
and a significant chance of personal injury to anyone taking part.
And I've never shown any of those traditions on this channel before, for a few reasons.
First, most of them have already been well-documented.
Second, a lot of the towns actually prefer to keep their traditions quiet,
because they already deal with too many tourists.
Like a lot of things, mass media and easy travel have started to ruin
what might be centuries-old practices in the towns.
And third...
Well, I've never actually been invited to take part before.
This is Bridgwater, in southwest England,
and today, I'll be holding a terrifying amount of pyrotechnics directly above my head,
in a big parade with a couple of hundred other people.
This isn't going to be a normal video,
because honestly, I'm not really sure what happens next.
I have no script beyond this point. They just said,
"Do you want to be in the squibbing display?" And...
I said yes.
This is a Bridgwater squib.
It's a Category 4 firework, so it should only be used in displays.
People obviously have had the Health and Safety training,
like everybody that does it in the street tonight.
It's not available to the general public,
and this specific one is made only for Bridgwater Carnival.
In here is about a pound of gunpowder.
(laughs) Okay. And various metallic elements.
So you got iron, titanium... All stuff that's gonna spark.
Phosphorus, lots of phosphorus metal, so exactly right.
So you get the heat burning from the gunpowder initially,
which heats up the metal, and that flies, comes out,
and then gives you the golds, the silvers, as the heated elements come out the top.
So I'm gonna be holding a large chunk of
flaming gunpowder and metal dust above my head.
Yeah, two feet above your head. Okay!
Along with 250 other people. Alright!
This is the cosh. This is the cosh, right.
As you can see, it's a glorified broom handle, in a way.
It's obviously changed over the years.
You can see various different-shaped ones through the back there.
But this one is quite old. This one is probably...
60-70 years old, that one.
Blimey, really? Yeah.
My dad had it from the club. He was well off with them.
A lot of these get handed on from generation to generation.
Wow, okay.
So... 60-year-old cosh, and it's having...
I mean, some explosives tied to it.
Let's do it.
So, if you will hold it...
Yeah. Like that.
They were roped on for generations.
But rope... tends to stretch.
Years ago, they used to have a banging, which was a fire at the end.
Which, we can't have an aerial anymore. We're not allowed to fire things up into the air.
Okay. I mean, we are on a High Street. It doesn't seem unreasonable(!)
It's like, any of these traditional, regional things that
it wouldn't be allowed if you were to ask anywhere else in the world to do it now.
In England in particular, they would not allow it.
How do you keep it safe then? 'Cause obviously, there's a lot of gunpowder,
and there's gonna be crowds around in the street.
Firstly, you'll be fully kitted out in PPE. So you'll have always full protection on.
When we leave here and we line you up,
you'll be carrying this out with your gloved hand over the fuse.
So it's held like that over your shoulder.
This is a bag of lighting wads. It's soaked in fluid.
Lighter fluid. Blue roll in lighter fluid. Yeah, okay.
We place those down the middle of the street.
Yep.
And once I'm happy that they're all in place, I sound a horn.
The lighters from each club will light these wads.
So you'll see a seam of fire going down through the centre of the road.
Then you just pull off the safety cover.
Yep.
And again, once those wads are lit, down through the road,
and you hear the second horn... The second horn, okay.
First horn, safety cover off.
Yeah, all you do is dip your fuse straight into the lighting fluid.
It'll fire straight away. Yep.
And then vertical, up above your head at arm's length.
Right.
It sounds very simple, but it will seem a lot—
It doesn't sound that simple! That's a lot of gunpowder very near my head!
That is very true, but you'll be fine.
You'll enjoy it, honestly, but it will seem longer than a minute(!)
Squibbing today is historic.
It's been part of the tradition of Bridgwater, going back to the 1600s.
Almost 430 years-ish now,
there's been a squibbing of one form or another.
It's all to do with the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and the failure of Guy Fawkes.
People had a bonfire, they threw the effigy on it,
and they used to have fireworks around the pubs.
And that's how it started.
We're on the move.
Back then, they'd make their own fireworks at home,
which was lots of wads of paper, and of course, they're very volatile.
A lot of them exploded. People were killed over the years.
And then, groups in the pubs then started to have a theme, they'd dress up.
So Carnival was born from that, but the squibbing was the start of it.
And then coming right up to modern day, post-Second World War onwards,
we've had organized displays.
Obviously, the finale after the Carnival procession is the squibbing event.
Light the wads!
We have got the opportunity to set a record.
The 400th anniversary in 2005
of the failed Gunpowder Plot, we had 180.
So I said, "Let's try and get 200."
And the clubs have been great, for we got 250.
Okay, now I'm nervous.
...from ten, nine, eight, seven, six,
five, four, three, two, one.
Light those squibs!
Stand well back, ladies and gentlemen.
Make sure you're safe.
Absolutely fantastic!
And you can see these coloured squibs.
You can see these coloured squibs in the middle.
Squibbing is unique to Bridgwater. It's unique to Bridgwater Carnival.
It's the biggest illuminated carnival in Europe,
and probably second or third in the whole world.
So it is something special, and squibbing is a big part of that.
Thank you very much indeed, ladies and gentlemen!
We sincerely hope that next year,
we'll have a proper Carnival back on the streets of Bridgwater.
[Caption+ by JS* https://caption.plus]
Have a good journey home,
and we'll see you back here next year on the streets of Bridgwater,
on Saturday, the 5th of November!
Woo-hoo!