What do you do during your retirement after years working as a chef for the RAF? Or even after working as a long-distance lorry driver? Answer: you agree to work part-time as a chef for Rob and Amie formerly of the Soar Bridge Inn. And since you were always good at pastry, you have become Barrow’s famous Pie Man (Phil).

 Famous because, by the time you retired, you have made 21,232 individual pies! That is not a Guinness Record (which apparently stands at 70,030 pies made by Suresh Kumar Sharma) but it is still a very huge number. And they are delicious; I know because I ate one very recently. Rob estimated that by the time they left the pub they must have made close to a £250,000 (that’s quarter of a million pounds) in pie sales.

Phil Wilford trained at the Royal Air Force School of Catering in 1976 and was a chef in the RAF for 22 years. Perhaps his most unusual posting was in the Maldives on the tiny Isle of Gam. It was a staging post for troops going to Singapore and Hong Kong. The island was nothing more than a strip of land whose perimeter took all of 50 minutes to walk round. Phil told me that his job in the RAF was very pressurized, with constant deadlines and expectations of catering excellence, especially while he was the personal chef to an Air Vice Marshall. After the RAF he became an HGV driver for the peace and quiet!

He was chatting one day about his experiences to Rob, who then ran Quorn’s Apple Tree. That led to him helping out with various big events. When Rob and Amie took over the Soar Bridge, they asked him to come as a chef to which he agreed, part-time, for the next six years. In addition to helping establish the Sunday carvery, his very popular pies led to Pie Evenings and Pie Prizes. For example, the customer eating the 5,000th pie won a pie a week for a year. And then the 10,000th pie… etc.

Originally, Phil made pies in six flavours, but the steak-and-ale pie was always the most popular and that was my choice when BUSCA recently held a party for members to celebrate its 50 years. Phil offered Barrow Voice readers a tip on pastry-making: never knead the dough, just handle the ingredients as lightly as you can and with cold hands. As soon as the dough holds together, put the lump in cling film and chill in the fridge for an hour before rolling and cooking.

Phil re-established his retirement when Amie and Rob left the Soar Bridge pub. He has no regrets but he had very much enjoyed working with them. Barrow Voice thanks all three and wishes them well for their futures.

Judith Rodgers