THE tartan will be donned and the bagpipes played with great pride north of the border next week as the Scots celebrate the life of their favourite son and bard Robert Burns.

But more and more of us in England are taking the opportunity to join the party on January 25 – the date of Burns’ birth 258 years ago – by holding their own informal Burns Night dinner with a traditional haggis as the centrepiece.

Scottish-produced traditional haggis, and even vegetarian haggis, has been widely available at this time of the year in supermarkets south of the border for a while but a local butcher has been striving to recruit new converts to this wee delicacy.

Legges of Bromyard makes its own haggis to a traditional recipe using lamb from a farm in Suckley and some of its own lamb too.

In recent years Anthony Legge, who runs the butchers and delicatessen business, has been on a mission to introduce haggis to customers who have never tried it before.

He explained that some people are put off by the main ingredients of lambs’ offal and they find the name – haggis - unappealing.

So he staged a clever campaign to give customers a gentle introduction to the dish – sausages made with half traditional pork filling and half haggis mixture and Scotch eggs using a half/half pork and haggis mixture.

The haggis spin-offs proved such a success that this year he has been inundated with orders for his home-made haggis and there isn’t going to be enough haggis mixture to put into sausages and Scotch eggs.

“We are keeping it traditional this year,” he said. “The haggis has become so popular and we have used so much lamb in them, there isn’t enough for the other things. People have been ordering haggis in 10s and 20s this year. We have had more orders than ever before.”

He said his campaign of the last couple of years had been a complete success and he is convinced it resulted in the increased demand for traditional haggis this year. He is expecting to sell around 700 haggis.

He said his kitchen staff are very pleased they don’t have to make the extra haggis sausages and Scotch eggs this year. They are flat out making the traditional haggis as well as 3,000 pies a week for the newly opened Hereford shop and the Bromyard deli.

Wetherspoon’s two Worcester pubs the Postal Order of Foregate Street and The Crown on Broad Street, will once again be marking the Scottish poet with a Burns Week running from yesterday (Friday January 20) until Friday January 27.

The pubs will have two special meals on the menu – Scottish haggis, neeps (swede) and tatties (potatoes); and a Highland Burger (a burger, haggis, whisky sauce, chips and six beer-battered onion rings).

Customers will also be able to enjoy a guest ale - Edinburgh Castle, from Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh. This is a Scottish 80/- Shilling Ale, ruby in colour, with malty and fruity aromas, a creamy bittersweet flavour and a mellow dry finish.

The Postal Order manager Robert Deeming said: “Burns Week is always great fun and our customers enjoy the fact that we celebrate for a week rather than just one day.”