Bacup family's heirloom - burnt pie from 1972! (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Bacup family's heirloom - burnt pie from 1972!

2:18pm Friday 11th March 2011 in News By Chris Hopper, Reporter

BURNT OFFERING Tony with the pie and a Holland’s miniature van

A 39-year-old, burnt-to-a-crisp Holland’s Pie is now a bizarre family heirloom.

Tony Johnson, 73, now keeps the meat pie on his mantlepiece.

And it has accompanied him all around the world on holiday, and his Forces sons even took it to down the Falklands and Iraq.

Tony said he was given it as a joke, and he’d been ‘having a laugh with it ever since’.

But his wife Alicia said: “I think that the whole situation is a little crazy to be honest, as do our friends.

“I must admit though, it has provided the family with many laughs over the years, so it’s not too much of a bad thing, I guess.”

Tony’s love affair with the pastry product was revealed by Baxenden-based Holland’s, which is celebrating British Pie Week.

In 1972, a neighbour handed over the pie that had been left in an oven overnight, leaving it completely black, Tony said.

Since then, retired window fitter Tony, of Bacup, said he had taken the pie everywhere, including on holidays to the US, Barbados, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Kuwait, and Thailand with his wife.

And it has even travelled to the Falklands with Tony’s RAF officer son-in-law and to Iraq with his two grandsons, who serve in the Army and RAF.

Nothing has been added to the pie to preserve it. Tony said it had simply been burnt solid and had somehow stood the test of time.

Tony said: “My son was given the pie as a bit of a joke, but I immediately thought that we could have some fun.

"We’ve been having a laugh with the pie ever since.

“Wherever we go, the pie comes with us. It’s been on holiday with us every year and it even has its own deckchair, fly hat and sombrero.

“As a family, we have had some real giggles with it.

"When it’s not travelling the world, it lives on the mantlepiece.”