Fans flocked to Hitchin's Waitrose store this morning to meet George and Larry Lamb at the launch of a new regenerative bread range.
The father and son duo took pictures and chatted to customers outside the Bedford Road store to celebrate Wildfarmed, the UK's first 100 per cent regenerative farmed bread - which is co-owned by George - arriving in Waitrose stores.
"To come here today and see so many waiting to say hello is amazing. The bread has been selling out too which is great," George told Comet reporter Dan Mountney.
"The main thing about food is obviously the taste, so we've worked incredibly hard with some of the best bakers in the country to try make bread that is the best you'll get in the supermarket.
"We've been clear since we started this that we wanted our food on the High Street, so starting at Waitrose is great for us and it's a really exciting partnership."
Regenerative farming builds healthy soil by focusing on rebuilding organic matter and the natural living biodiversity in the soil, rather than using harmful chemicals and pesticides.
It's something George is very passionate about, explaining: "Everything we do is about bringing life back into our fields.
"Most farming is done in a way that's called conventional, and it's heavily reliant on chemicals. If you put chemicals on something for too long, inevitably it's going to have the unfortunate of disturbing the soil biology.
"It's might not but appear like the most interesting thing in the world, but all life on earth is a direct result of functioning soil. If you've got healthy soil, you will have healthy plants. If you've got healthy plants, you will have healthy animals and humans.
"We're all relying on this thing that people just look at as mud to be healthy. We're soil farmers basically. We feed the soil and not the plants, because if the soil is healthy that'll take care of the rest.
"When the green revolution happened in the 60s, the focus was about growing as much as possible. The issue is we've now done yield at all cost forever and the soil is now not capable of growing healthy crops, so you're in this doom cycle of putting more and more chemicals on.
"At some point you have to rethink it, but what we're doing is not some new thing. Our great, great grandparents would have farmed like this, so it's just old school farming."
George's father and Gavin and Stacey star Larry echoed that sentiment, adding: "My generation, to a degree, are responsible for the state the world is in right now. So this feels like my chance to help out at the coal face and make a difference.
"This is where the efforts of George and everyone involved will pay off. The punters can come in and get a loaf of bread that has been produced naturally, which helps pay your dues to the environment."
George started Wildfarmed alongside Andy Cato - one half of Groove Armada - after meeting him a nightclub in Ibiza, a place where he joked "all good agricultural businesses start".
Andy had purchased a farm in the south of France and was starting to farm regeneratively, work that has seen him honour by the nation.
"We realised something special was going on down there, so we wanted to help him bring it to the UK. Me and my other business partner, Ed, decided to chuck in our day jobs and we haven't looked back," George said.
Wildfarmed bread is made from wheat grown by more than 100 regenerative farmers, including Clarkson's Farm star Jeremy Clarkson, a partnership that George said "couldn't have gone any better".
"That show is a cultural phenomenon. Working in TV for as long as I have, you get an idea quite quickly of whether a show will be a hit, and Clarkson's Farm has gone absolutely bananas," he said.
"Jeremy was saying to me that Top Gear was the most watched show in the world, but the response he gets to Clarkson's Farm is far bigger than Top Gear.
"It's the same reason that agriculture got me and why I've changed my life. There's something really human about growing food, being outside and looking after people."
George also paid tribute to his father's support, adding: "It's a lovely thing to get to work with your dad.
"He's interesting because when you're coming to the tail end of your life, you start to think about what you're leaving behind because it's a time to reflect. He knows that the world is in a bit of a mess and that we need to do something about it.
"Of course I'm always encouraging him to come to these things, but he's coming to a regenerative farming festival next month and he did that on his own. I didn't ask him to come. He's invested in this emotionally."
The Lamb's know Hitchin well, with George having attended nearby St Christopher School in Letchworth, and both were delighted to be back in the town.
"I haven't been to Hitchin since 1996. I went to St Christopher in Letchworth so we used to come to Hitchin and get beaten by all the other schools in sport," George recalled.
"It's great to be back and it's a beautiful part of the world.
"It's funny because when I used to come here as a youngster I thought it was a bit sleepy, but now I've changed my life and I'm working in agriculture, I've realised this is a bit of an agricultural town.
"We farm with the Cherry family in Willian, and they are the home of the biggest regenerative farming festival called Groundswell.
"Even at St Christopher, the whole ethos of the school, which I maybe didn't realise at the time and even pushed against it a bit, is really philosophical.
"St Christopher's is a vegetarian school, but when I went there I wasn't veggie, and I remember that when dad used to come down I'd always make him take me to this same restaurant in Hitchin to get a mixed grill.
"All of those memories makes coming back here very special for me."
"The reception we've received in Hitchin is quite extraordinary. George went to school nearby so we drove up here at least once a week for four years. It's a really nice town with lovely people, so it's great to be back here," Larry added
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