Tom Parker Bowles talks posh pork scratchings A famously scruffy dresser, who has to be shoehorned into suits for formal occasions, Tom grew up in the countryside. A key foodie influence, apart from his mother, was his uncle, Simon Parker Bowles, who opened the St James's oyster bar Green's in 1984. Tom worships oysters; I have seen him consume dozens, and shuck them himself, too. The more hands-on, or perhaps hands-in, he can be, the better. On another memorable occasion, we shared a traditional crab boil in the bayou near New Orleans. Crabs and red-skinned potatoes were cooked in two huge oil drums, drained and tipped steaming on to a long trestle table. We had to crack and pick our own crabmeat. Let's just say lunch went on for hours, and Tom's already wide smile got broader and broader. That grin can be levelled immediately when he's holding forth on pet hates. Christmas turkey is one object of odium - "a mind-numbingly boring bird"" - and cottage cheese another. I once tried to defend the latter, nominating it as the British ricotta, and was met with a barrage of livid denial. Interestingly, I have never heard Tom be more than passively complimentary about his stepfather's hobbyhorse, organic farming.He has a sort of "it's OK for those that really want to bother," attitude. Instead, when farming is under discussion, it is what is "British" and "delicious" that truly matters to him. We met up at a farm in Oxfordshire with two old friends who are also his new business partners: fellow scribe Matthew Fort (once described as the imagined offspring of Elizabeth David and Jack Kerouac) and Rupert Ponsonby, a beer industry expert and farmer ("a rotten one: I have to rely on a farm manager," he admits). The three have been busy reinventing that ancient, humble and beloved British bar snack, the Black Country's signature dish: pork scratchings. They aim to transform the fortunes of these time-honoured little strips of salted crackling, as rich in lore (the shattered tooth, the scorched pig hair, the rumoured possibility of encountering a nipple) as they are in saturated fat. Why pork scratchings? Tom, Matthew and Rupert are all Old Etonians (though not contemporaries), the kind of Englishmen who know the beauty of Gentlemen's Relish on hot toast for tea. But it is a myth that privilege precludes a liking for more lowly British delicacies. "We were in a pub together when we decided to start a brand," says Tom (who remembers buying the old scratchings, Mr Porkies, from Tap, the Eton tuck shop). I said to Matt and Rupert: why not do for pork scratchings what Kettle Chips did for potato crisps? By this he means an upmarket revolution based on high-quality ingredients and careful cooking. Yet their "posh" scratchings - they prefer "crackling" - will succeed only by tickling the exacting tastebuds of the average British pub-goer. Tom's strong opinions on scratchings are well documented. In The Full English he finds Nirvana in a "proper boozer"," the Vine ("better known as the Bull and Bladder") in Brierly Hill in the West Midlands - pork scratchings" heartland. I enjoyed his summation of a proper boozer, incidentally: "all sticky carpeted charm, where a three-course lunch means prawn cocktail crisps to start, pork scratchings as a main course and a bag of cheese and onion to finish off". After a superb pint of artisan brewed beer, he and his companion, the equally forensic trencherman and writer Charles Campion, are offered an impressive à la carte featuring no fewer than three different scratchings. "If there is any better partner to good ale than salted, deep-fried pigskin, I'd like to meet it," Tom writes. Three years later he's attempted to create just that, combining flavour with ethics in Mr Trotter's Pork Crackling. "Around 95 per cent of the rind used to make British pork scratchings is from Danish pigs," Tom says. British farmers have had a hard time over the last few years: buyers introduced a higher standard of welfare that cost more and made it hard to compete against imports. We've been able to make sure that the pork we use is British, and the scratchings are a UK product. A contributing factor to the suffering of UK farmers has been a long-held EU labelling rule that made it possible to label a product as "British"" as long as it is made in the UK - even from 100 per cent imported ingredients. As for the welfare of the pigs themselves, every effort is being made to use free-range pork. "As yet, 65 per cent of the pigs are free range, and the remainder are outdoor bred, but we are aiming to increase the free range when more is available," says Rupert, adding that the welfare of indoor-reared pigs in the UK is better than that of imports. The venture has had a little indirect royal assistance, via Matthew, who earlier last year was hunting for a source of pork. "Fortuitously, I managed to gatecrash a visit HRH was making to an estate - Houghton Hall, near Sandringham - on which free-range pigs were being raised for Waitrose," he says. While there, he popped a question to John Hughes of Dalehead Foods, who slaughters and processes pork for Waitrose. I said, 'What happens to all your pig rind - any chance of turning it into scratchings? And he said, 'I don't see why not."" Dalehead now supplies some of the rind for Mr Trotters. It was Rupert who found the right place to make their scratchings. "I came across Graham Jebb, the managing director of Raygray Snacks in Staffordshire, when he asked me to try a new pack of pork scratchings with a separate pot of apple sauce," he says. Jebb had had the same idea, to take scratchings upmarket with "a honeycomb texture and no hard bits"," and had installed £450,000 worth of new ovens and equipment with this in mind. After the pigs, the star is the oven. Baking the rind, rather than frying it, produces an expanded billow of crackling that is tender to eat. Using an oven also works with less fatty regions of the pig's skin, so yields are higher. Jebb had also developed a sea salt-based seasoning mix instead of the monosodium glutamate that is used on all other scratchings. He had been experimenting with Danish pork, but then along came the OE threesome saying they wanted to make 100 per cent British pork scratchings. It was only when Jebb managed to persuade abattoirs to provide what they needed that their vision became attainable. So why have they decided to call their product "crackling"? "Crackling is not 'posh" for scratching," insists Tom. Some might take a snobby view, saying there is only one kind of scratching, but we don't want to meet such people - we just like to be slightly different, that's all. Whether or not this ethical pub snack will take off remains to be seen. In the meantime, I wonder if the crackling will soon be a "by royal appointment" nibble? Only on merit, I suspect, but I know I will be told it is none of my business should I ask. Scratching a living Pork scratchings originated in the early 19th century, when the production of meat began to be industrialised. The term literally denotes the scraps from the slaughterhouse floor. An estimated 20 million packs of pork scratchings are sold each year as bar snacks. The Black Country in the West Midlands is the epicentre of the industry. There are 606 calories and 2.9g of salt per 100g of pork scratchings (Source: Mr Porky's, sold in 20g packs). Traditionally, scratchings are fried and made with the softer, relatively hairless skin with attached fat, behind the hock (back foot) of the pig; crackling is roasted or baked, and can be made from a wider portion of the pig. Before cooking scratchings, hair must be singed off and the skin blanched in boiling water to open the pores. Some swear by this to optimise crackling levels when roasting pork at home. International versions include pork rinds and cracklings in the USA, grillons or grattons in France, chicharrones in Central America and the Spanish Caribbean. 99 per cent of scratchings sold in the UK are made with Danish pork. Before recent changes in legislation, this was not revealed on labels. When fried, the skin of the scratching hardens. All UK brands carry a label warning that contents are suitable only for people with strong healthy teeth. Mr Trotter's Great British Pork Crackling is available at Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Booths supermarkets and The Anchor, Walberswick, Suffolk, £1.89 for 60g