Owd Grandad Piggott

Owd Grandad Piggott is a fictional character created by author Alan Povey based on a real life person. The Owd Grandad Piggott stories are best known in Povey's home town of Stoke-on-Trent where they have often been heard on BBC Radio Stoke, read by the author. Owd Grandad Piggott is noted for having a broad Staffordshire accent and speaks in an old Potteries dialect. The stories are mostly set in the 1950s when the pottery industry was still at large.

Owd Grandad Piggott was born and bred in Longton, one of the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent famous for its many pot banks. Also famous for its immense poverty. In the Owd Grandad Piggott stories he lives in a terraced house in Longton with his long suffering wife and is the next door neighbour of the author. His neighbours on the other side are Percy and Lizzy Lockett. Most of his days are spent in his local pub owned by Tommy Dawkins or, on the many occasions that he is ejected from here, the many pubs and bookmakers in and around the Longton area.

Owd Grandad is hardly a savoury character. By appearance he is scruffy and unkempt, often wearing a tatty trenchcoat and has little pride in his general appearance and manners. In one story he appears in the pub with a large blob of lard on his shirt but refuses to wipe it off preferring to leave it "until it goes hard then it will chip off". He is rather crafty in nature; always up for trying easier ways to make money. His skills in talking himself out of situations usually involving the police leave a lot to be desired. He uses phrases such as "it might have looked like me but it wasn't, I've got 6 brothers and they all look like me" or tries to warn off police officers by saying "ay up, I've got a disease!".

Despite his many brushes with the law Owd Grandad can hardly be called a hardened criminal. His arrests and fines are always for minor breaches of the law such as breaching the peace or being drunk and disorderly.

Owd Grandad Piggott's relationship with his wife is hardly peaceful with their many arguments and rows being somewhat of a trademark for many of the stories. Though they have been married for over 30 years, over that time Grandma Piggott (as his wife is known) has had to suffer almost constant physical and verbal abuse from her husband. Often this is a result of Owd Grandad's alcoholism. However, she often gives as good as she gets with instances of her throwing a carving knife at her husband and has allegedly, according to Owd Grandad, tried to poison him in the past. Despite all of this there is only one instance in the all of the stories of Grandma Piggott actually walking out on him. That coming after a row involving a sledgehammer shaft.

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