Things I Learned About Slough

Just four minutes by train from Windsor is the city of Slough. Pronounced so that it rhymes with "plow" and "now", the city hasn't always had a positive reputation.

Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman wrote this about Slough in 1937:

"Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough, it isn't fit for humans now".

Then, much more recently, the BBC comedy "The Office" was set in the Slough Trading Estate. And, for anyone who has ever seen the show, you'll see how bleak Slough can be.

But, after reading this article from the BBC, I learned the following:

• Thunderbirds was filmed in Slough. (This was a 1960s television show about a family that ran an emergency response service using rockets and spaceships. Oh yeah...and it was filmed using puppets. The marionette kind.)
  
• Mars Bars are made there. (And from the Mars site, I learned that the Slough factory makes 200,000 tons of confectionary a year, and 3 million Mars Bars a day. Who's eating those things?) (Oh, and the Mars Bars here in England are like Milky Ways in the US.) (And, from following wikipedia links (Mars Bars to Deep Fried Mars Bars to...), I learned about a deep-fried pizza, but that's another story.)
  
• The Beatles started their British tour in Slough in 1963. (However, according to this, there were several 1963 tours.)