Rock star!

For generations, a stick of rock has been as much a part of a day at the sea as paddling, snoozing in a stripey deckchair, building sandcastles or enjoying an ice cream.

In 1937, George Formby sang one of his most popular songs about the sticky treat, With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock – even though the BBC refused to air a lyric full of more saucy innuendo than a rack of seaside postcards!

The following year the sweet gave its name to Graham Greene’s crime novel Brighton Rock, in which it was used as a metaphor for unchangeable human nature.

As one character says, “It’s like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you’ll still read Brighton.”

By then, rock was established as a seaside staple. Although sales peaked in the 1950s and ’60s, it remains one of the top souvenirs, typically packaged with a photograph of the resort it comes from.

The forerunner of rock was strips of raw sugar cane cut straight from the field and given to children to suck. By the 19th century, candy sticks were a popular treat at fairgrounds and known as Fair Rock.

It’s not known who pioneered the idea of rock with letters running through it, but one contender is ex-miner Ben Bullock, who began producing Blackpool Rock at his Yorkshire factory in 1887.

Other sources say the inventor was a more colourfully named Victorian named Dynamite Dick.

Since then, little has changed in the way rock is hand-made by confectioners called sugar boilers – except the range of flavours added, which include Marmite, chicken tikka, and gin and elderflower.

You can watch rock being made at Docwras Rock Shop in Great Yarmouth.

The “World’s Largest Rock Shop” is not only lined with sticks of Yarmouth rock in every colour, but has windows into the factory where the team produces 25,000 sticks a week.

“People love to see how rock is made,” says Stephen Docwra, whose grandfather opened the shop in 1922. “Especially adding the mes