Faggots are meatballs made from minced off-cuts and offal (especially pork, and traditionally pig's heart, liver, and fatty belly meat or bacon) mixed with herbs and sometimes bread crumbs.

[6] Their popularity spread from there,[citation needed] especially to South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, when many agricultural workers left the land to work in the rapidly expanding industry and mines of that area.

The first use of the term in print was in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser of Saturday 3 June 1843, a news report of a gluttonous man who ate twelve of them.

[citation needed] The use of the word "faggot" has caused misunderstanding due to its American English meaning as a pejorative term for a homosexual man.

In 2004, a radio commercial for the UK supermarket chain Somerfield, in which a man rejects his wife's suggested dinner saying "I've got nothing against faggots, I just don't fancy them" was found to have been innuendo which breached the Advertising and Sponsorship Code and was banned by the industry regulator Ofcom.