BLACK pudding expert Arthur Wild had a new title in 1978 – sausage maker supreme.

For the butcher, who had a shop in Stanley Street, Accrington, won first prize in the speciality section of the national sausage competition at his first attempt.

It was his king size specially seasoned Cumberland pork sausage which had the judges sizzling and handing him the title.

But he wouldn’t have even entered the contest if his son Andrew had not ‘twisted his arm’.

Arthur, who had first made news when he finished third in the 1977 national black pudding championships, said: “Andrew kept on at me to enter, but I didn’t think I would have much of a chance.

“Eventually I decided to have a go and posted the entry form just in time to make the deadline.”

He and his whole family, wife Celia, Andrew, and daughter Deborah all travelled to London for the judging at Alexandra Palace.

Arthur had been making and selling the Cumberland sausage for 10 years and kept his recipe top secret.

“I have a few customers who come from out of town especially to buy them, but didn’t think they were prize winners,” he concluded.

A secret recipe handed down from generation to generation also took butcher Duncan Burgess to the top of the sausage making tree that same year.

Duncan, 35, who had a butcher’s business in Manchester Road, Haslingden, was placed fourth from more than 400 entries from across the Common Market in a competition to find Europe’s ‘super sausage’.

The championship was the first he had entered, but after an entry form came to the shop he decided to give it a go and went off to the Alexandra Palace bearing a pound of cooked pork sausages and a pound of uncooked ones.