From the archive: A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world

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• 00:00

  This is The Guardian.

• 00:16

  Hi, my name is Tom Lamont.

• 00:22

  I'm the author of A Day in the Life of Almost Every Vending Machine in the World,

• 00:28

  which published in April 2022.

• 00:32

  I've got a feeling this was a post-COVID idea.

• 00:36

  One of those ones where perhaps reporting opportunities were limited at the time.

• 00:43

  I've always loved vending machines.

• 00:45

  I've always been interested in them,

• 00:48

  brought to hunger at the sight of them from school days on really.

• 00:54

  But they're in the corridors of my secondary school.

• 00:56

  They were in the corridors of my workplaces,

• 00:59

  you would kind of pass the colorful bars and snacks and instantly feel hungry.

• 01:06

  And I guess something sort of lodged in my mind that later became the sort of journalistic seed of something.

• 01:14

  I know that it didn't really take shape as a sort of possible long read or long piece of reported journalism until I came across the right people.

• 01:25

  through whom I thought I could tell a good story.

• 01:28

  The main one of those is the main character of this story,

• 01:32

  who's a kind of vending machine kingpin based in Manchester.

• 01:35

  And I first heard about him when I read a local news story in a newspaper about him on Halloween night.

• 01:44

  Instead of answering his door and giving out sweets and chocolate to the kids who came,

• 01:49

  he just put one of his vending machines in the driveway and set it to free mode.

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