Antiques Roadshow viewers couldn’t help but giggle after Fiona Bruce was presented with a set of Welsh ‘sugar nips’ during Sunday's episode.
The presenter joined Lisa Lloyd for a game of ‘Basic, Better, Best’ where she was shown three items and had to decide which of the three antiques held the most value.
But fans of the series were distracted when Fiona was shown a set of ‘sugar nips’ - special tongs for handling sugar cubes.
“These are sugar nips, again they’re benchwood. And these are really interesting actually,’ Lisa explained.
“They’re carved from one piece of wood, and then they’re bent using steam, they use steam to bend them, and then there’s a post in the centre obviously, which makes them into little sugar nips.”
“...Or little sugar tongs,” Fiona corrected, in a bid to sound a little less rude.
Revealing they were inscribed for a Mrs Williams from August 1903, Lisa continued to explain there was a number of different reasons why they could have been made.
There’s two schools of thoughts for these, one that they were given as basically a love token, and it’s carved with hearts,” she explained.
“But the other school of thought is they were actually made by striking miners and they were given to people who basically supported them and obviously they weren’t getting any salary while they were on strike so people would donate money to the miners’ funds. Then they would give these are a token of thanks for people who donated money.
“These are unique to North Wales - You don’t find those in South Wales.”
While those present at the Roadshow, held at National Botanic Garden of Wales, viewers at home couldn’t help but get the giggles at the phrase “sugar nips” - and took to Twitter to make a joke out of it.
Turns out that the sugar nips were the most basic of the valued pieces, with Lisa saying: “They look incredible I know, but you can buy these for £80-£120.”
The most expensive price was a ‘love spoon’, which was specially created by young lads for their sweethearts.
The spoon - carved out of wood, contained intricate folk details displaying their love.
As part of the detail, the spoons have a hollow handle filled with balls ‘to match the amount of children the man hopes to have’ with the lucky lady.
“So no pressure there then!” laughed Fiona, as she was presented with a spoon holding four balls.
Despite being a popular piece of folk art, a collection of them is actually quite lucrative - though the team didn’t specify how much.
Antiques Roadshow airs Sundays at 7.15pm on BBC One.
