There's a queue of around 100 hungry people snaking down Exchange Square, and I'm feeling the pressure to get a bit faster at wrapping a pile of meat, veg and gravy into a giant Yorkshire pudding.
While I try to remember what mix of stuffing, carrots (not peas) gravy and pulled pork one customer has requested in their Yorkshire pudding wrap, I'm also preparing the next wrap with giant deep-fried sausages and mashed potato (no gravy) and apple sauce an eager punter is waiting for.
Yes, I've gone behind the scenes at Manchester Christmas Markets ' busiest stall Porky Pig on a crowded, sunny, Saturday to see just what it's like serving up hot wraps and pints of beer to the thousands of people flocking to the event for its big return this year.
READ MORE : Map of Manchester Christmas Markets and guide to all the locations
The jovial team at Porky Pig let me jump on board for the day at Exchange Square which is becoming one of the busiest hotspots of this year's Markets offering.
While the markets don't officially open to the public until 10am each day it's an early start at the stall for Porky Pig's owner Eddie Osman, 44, and his partner Lucy Berry, 34, with prep for the day ahead from 8am.
It has been a real Manchester success story for Porky Pig - Cheetham Hill-raised Eddie started out his street food business working a pitch outside Manchester United as an 18-year-old, before his punt on a stall at the Christmas Markets five years ago turned the Yorkshire pudding wrap business into a runaway word-of-mouth success.
They're expecting over 1,000 customers over the course of the Saturday I head along, and will be cooking up some 600 giant sausages that will become the battered pigs in blankets - not to mention the full roasted pig that looms large at the front of the stall ready to be shredded up for pulled pork.
Eddie says "welcome to hell" with a mischievous grin as he hands me my Porky Pig jumper and woolly hat - and I start to wonder what I've let myself in for as I gear up for my health and safety training with the team.
One thing I definitely didn't require was the two layers of thermals I thought I'd need given the outdoor location - because once in the cabin I'm surrounded by heat at every turn with the ovens in the back, the heat lamps at the front and the grills at the back that sizzle the wraps together.
Mum-of-one Robyn Cannon, 25, from Openshaw, has been working with Porky Pig for the past three years now, and knows just what to expect over the next six weeks of Christmas Markets' madness.
She's tasked with training up newcomers like myself and takes my temperature (as everyone has to do here for Covid safety each morning) and gives me a thorough briefing on how everything works and what I can expect, before asking if I have any questions.
"Do I get to eat a free wrap?" Is obviously the first thing that pops into my mind (yes, is the answer - one a day for all workers).
And my second is: "Do you get a lot of rude customers?"
Robyn laughs. She says: "There's really great banter on this stall with the customers, obviously with having to ask everyone 'do you want stuffing?' you get the odd cheeky remark but it's all in good humour.
"By the evening it gets to be a real party atmosphere and everyone is singing and joining in dancing out there.
"It's a hard job, but it's a great atmosphere and we all know it’s only six weeks so we get through the long shifts."
The queue starts for the wraps from around 10.30am - and from then on it's just relentless for the whole day and I can't believe how far the queues stretch back - practically to The Printworks by the afternoon.
More staff join throughout the day, and at the peak there's around eight of us all busily stuffing and wrapping our battered treats for the masses, while squishing our bodies in and around each other in the narrow galley kitchen run inside the cabin.
Everyone is so dedicated to the cause back here, and there's genuinely great banter between the staff and also with the customers.
In fact, the food customers make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside so happy and smiley they all are as they collect their wraps, and how kind they are when I explain I'm training and it's my first day.
Well, that is until I move down to the bar side of the stall and get to experience the great British public under the influence of alcohol.
A group of inebriated "lads" approach clutching a load of beer cups to ask for their refund (It's a £1.50 refundable deposit for the beer cups and £3 for the gluhwein mugs, something you have to remind EVERY customer when they look at you ashen-faced at the price of the drinks).
One decides it's very funny to bang on about them being "fake glasses" and continues to tell me that they're "fake, fake like your bottom".
Now, I've had plenty of insults in my time but being accused of having a fake bottom really does take the biscuit.
Summoning all my teenage barmaid experience of "grinning and bearing it" with lairy beer men, I tell them that yes the glasses are "fake" (plastic), and that no, they don't need to prove it by smashing them over their head - as one starts to suggest.
In charge of the bar at Porky Pig is Mark Davis, a man who oozes authority, and as soon as he looms into vision the lads soon pipe down.
Blackpool-born Mark, 52, now lives in London and has a business running festivals. But with his work pretty much decimated by lockdown, he decided to come up to Manchester for six weeks to earn enough money to be able to return home to his family in time to properly enjoy Christmas.
It's a story echoed across the Porky Pig van - people who are all willing to work the hard slog of ten hour+ days on the hectic Manchester markets for the next six weeks knowing that at the end of it is the reward of a week or two off to spend with their families.
In the kitchens at the back, chef Nathan Turner, from Swinton, is busy wrapping bacon around the sausages before plunging them into the deep fat fryer and jokes: "I'm sick of the sight of sausages".
He likens returning to the Christmas Markets as "like a woman forgetting the pain of childbirth".
He jokes: "When it's over you say you're never doing it again, but then you forget about the pain and you just think 'go on then, just another year, just another one."
Having previously worked in the restaurant world, the appeal for Nathan is knowing that working at Porky Pigs up til December 23 will mean he gets to be at home with his daughter Myla, 12, and his family.
He says: "With Christmas coming, I can work 14 hours a day here and then I’ve saved up enough so that I can take a couple of weeks off with my family."
I watch as Sylvia, 51, from Newton Heath, tirelessly feeds carrots through the slicing machine in the back workroom - three massive 10kg bags worth - over the course of the morning before she then heads straight to muck in out front making wraps.
Sylvia, who has worked with Eddie for the past 13 years, says: "People don’t realise the hard work that goes into it, and it’s constant all through the day.
"But I just enjoy it, the buzz, the laugh, the hard graft… I get bored if I don’t work, I need to work and all the staff are great here it makes it worthwhile."
Eddie's partner Lucy, who describes herself as "dogsbody, maid, business partner and better half of Eddie" keeps a rigorous eye over quality control and hygiene on the stall, and proudly shows me her 5 star hygiene rating certificate.
All Christmas Markets stalls are visited by health inspectors during the festive run in to ensure hygiene standards are met while they're stationed here.
Klaxons also go off at regular intervals, when staff have to down tools and do a rigorous hand wash.
Back out front and getting to grips with a request for a Yorkshire pudding bowl filled with EVERYTHING on offer, I watch as staff member Kirsten McEwen, 25, from Failsworth, speedily fills two bowls at once - while also belting out Dolly Parton's 9-to-5.
Kirsten has only been working on the stall for a week, but has already been nicknamed "Wrapido" so quick she is in whipping a wrap together.
But there's no speedy gain without pain - as I see her have to consign two wraps to the bin because she forgot about them on the hot grill while she'd be getting busy with her next order - and burnt wraps are a no no to serve to customers.
As darkness falls and the fairy lights twinkle to life in the city centre, it's my time to bid farewell to the Porky Pig team - although the queue of punters still stretches right out across the square.
I'm in awe of the hard work the entire team put in each day here, and to see the joy in people's face when they bite into their hot wraps.
And I actually felt a bit gutted to be leaving, as I'd really got into the rhythm of the wraps and was quite proud of the little parcels of joy I got to hand over to happy customers.
It was to be a busy night ahead for the team after I'd gone - with council officers instructing at 6.30pm they would have to stop serving alcohol along with all stalls on Exchange Square due to concerns over large crowds - but they kept on smiling and continued to serve food until the 9pm closing time.
Eddie says he still can't believe quite how busy the markets have been since their launch on November 12, and feels so grateful for the support of customers.
He says: "We have been the busiest stall and it's just mental the response from the public.
"It's so nice, we feel like everything we have put into it has paid off."
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