SkyNews reports that Barry Rigby ate a meat pie in 43 seconds to win the annual pie eating contest at Harry’s Bar in Wigan, England today.

The Wigan pie contest is probably the best publicized English contest. This year’s gimmick of checking for performance enhancing substances was noted by the BBC. (Gravy is listed as a performance enhancing substance). Pitch Weekly also had a blog entry about the contest (from Liz K)

update The Guardian, Daily Express and Manchester Evening Post have articles.

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A writer for the British newspaper The Guardian wrote an article about competitive eating in the UK after competing in a burrito eating contest. The article mentions Tim Janus’ medical examination and Don Lerman’s quote about suffering internal bleeding.

In other UK CE news, the BoingBoing blog has an entry about a breakfast challenge in Westhoughton.

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• Krispy Kreme eating contest at Arkansas Harley Davidson tommorow, 1st prize is a $500 Harley Davidson gift certificate
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• Report on the Wigan pie eating contest. The winner, Fred Wyatt, was 61 and took 56 seconds to eat his pie. No mention or picture of the oversized pies reportedly made by accident appears in the article.
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Metro.co.uk reports that the pies made for tomorrow’s meat pie eating contest at Harry’s Bar in Wigan, England have a diameter of 12 inches and a height of 3.5 inches. The original intentions were to use 12 cm by 3.5 cm pies, but no units of measurement were provided to the cook. The measurement mix-up expands the volume of the pies by a factor of over 15 (2.5 cm/ in.)^3.

This is not the first time that an issue affecting the contest has received a lot of publicity; a dog ate the pies that were to be used for the 2007 competition.

Youtube has a clip about another object constructed to improper specifications.

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rockfm.co.uk reports that the World Pie Eating championship held at Harry’s Bar in Wigan (Manchester area), England next month will be webcast. Viewers will have to pay £14.99 ($23) to receive information on how to view the contest. The contest previously received coverage for scaling back from a timed format to a fixed amount of a single pie. Last year’s winner, Adrian Frost, took 34 seconds to finish his pie. ($23 per 34 seconds is equivalent to more than $1000 / hour)

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• Gallery and full results from 2008 Wookey Hole Caves Big Eat
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The Telegraph reports that Denzil Gunner, a 30 year old solicitor from London, won a prize of £1,000 at today’s mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole Caves in England. Gunner’s mark of 41 pies in 10 minutes missed the record Sonya Thomas set in 2006 by five pies.

It is not mentioned in the article if the pies used this year were the same size as the pies used two years ago. The pictures above from the Telegraph’s gallery show that the pies used in 2006 might have been larger.

The BBC also has an article.

update Times Online article, ITN video

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Wookey Hole Caves in England will hold its annual mince pie eating contest on November 18. The winner will receive £1000 and the chance to compete an eating contest in the United States this winter. (It does not say if travel will be provided.)

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• Ex-“Monster Garage” star Jesse James (Sanda Bullock’s husband) won a pie-eating contest at the Tennessee Valley Fair. The contest might be seen on James’ Spike TV show
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The Independent of London has an article about competitive eating with a lot of quotes from Ryan Nerz which reports that 1.5 million viewers watched the Nathan’s finals. The article also claims that Badlands Booker has released 2 albums (he has produced four “Hungry & Focused” CDs) and that the Sacramento death in the bladder endurance contest happened in January (it took place in 2007). British competitor Lup Fan Yau believes that Sonya Thomas has made millions from competitive eating.

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• Video of Arturo Rios showing his hot dog eating techniques. Pete Davekos also appears. (from Andrea Fasano)
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Update Skinnyboy says he made no such comment to the initial commeter “News at Five” on his blog – ojrifkin

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The Kestrel Inn offers a 200+ ounce steak on it’s menu, which is reportedly the world’s largest commercially available steak. The BBC has an article about a 2005 contest in which diners attempted to complete that steak. Sara Manifold of Wigan was declared the winner in that contest after eating 100 ounces of steak over five hours. The article also says that the landlady of the restaurant claims her son in law ate 120 ounces of the steak.

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A news video about this year’s mince pie eating contest at Wookey Hole in England is available on youtube. Sonya Thomas’ victory in the 2006 contest makes a brief appearance. The clip contains what is probably the first documented use of a chain saw by a pirate in an eating contest.

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The BBC reports that Adrian Frost won a meat pie eating contest in Wigan, England. The contest was threatened after a dog ate many of the competition pies the day before the event, but enough replacement pies were produced. The dog, Charlie, was allowed to repeat his gluttony in the contest:

“The twist is that Dave has turned up this morning saying he wants Charlie to enter the contest.

“We’ve nothing in the rules to say dogs can’t compete so he will be lining up against the other pie eaters and judging by his performance yesterday he’s got a great chance of winning.”

However, it seems that Charlie was still full from Wednesday’s mammoth eating session as Mr Williams revealed that he did not even finish his competition pie.

See also: Manchester Evening News

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Metro.co,uk reports that Clive Pearson won a prize of 1000 pounds at the Big Eat contest at Wookey Hole in England by eating 26 mince pies. Pearson’s total is slightly more than half of the 46 Sonya Thomas ate at last year’s contest. Emma Woods Photos has some pictures and a blog entry.

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Kung Fu Events reports that an eating contest will be held in London England on September 2 to promote the DVD release of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. There will be three rounds: fries, meatballs and milkshakes which correspond to the three main characters in the cartoon.

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The Times of London has a report by Andrew Heath, who competed in the Premier Travel Inn breakfast eating contest in order to win money to repay student loans.

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(from Carey Poehlmann) The Times of London reports on yesterday’s breakfast eating contest sponsored by Premier Travel Inn that was held in London, England:

The meal — one sausage, one slice of bacon, one egg, four mushrooms and one croissant — pitted big figures in British eating such as the national champion Rob “Baby Face” Burns against newcomers such as Sir Scoffsalot and Laura Strachan.

The winner was Lup Fan Yau, whose 5¾ meals equated to two days’ worth of calories before lunch.

Lup Fan Yau works for The Sun newspaper.

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Reuters has an article and video about the Nettles Eating Championship held at the Bottle Inn in Dorset, England last weekend.

As part of the ‘World nettle Eating Championship’ competitors had to munch their way through the leaves in one hour. Mouth numbing substances were not permitted, but a swig of beer between bites was allowed.

Although cooked nettles lose their sting, eating raw nettles can turn the tongue black and make the lips swell, but that did not stop the participants from munching on their greens in order to become champion and win a crate of beer.

The winners were 28-year-old graphic designer Paul Collins who managed to eat 58 feet of nettles and 23-year-old Sonia Fewkes who got through 30 feet.

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The Sun reports that spaces are still available in the breakfast eating championship which will be held in London, England on Tuesday. The contest will last 12 minutes and 35 seconds, which is claimed to be the average breakfast time. Sun employee, Lup Fun Yau, recognized by Guinness as the record holder for jam doughnuts, will participate.

The winner is the person who devours the most breakfast trays in the time allowed, each of which contains a mammoth 1,300 calories.

It contains 1 sausage; 1 fried egg; 1 rasher bacon; 1 tomato; 1 tbsp baked beans; 1 slice white toast with butter; 1 bowl Cornflakes with 200ml milk; 1 pot organic strawberry yoghurt; 1 croissant; 1 blueberry muffin.

And if you’re out in front, you’ll walk away (or maybe waddle away) with a £500 prize and the title of Britain’s Best Biggest Breakfast Eater.

To take part, call 08701 977346 and leave your details.

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(From GizmoCafe) After a woman died following a water drinking contest in which the prize was a Nitendo Wii, another ill considered eating contest held in conjunction with a video game has taken place. The Daily Mail reports on a contest to promote the launch of “Gods of War II” for the Sony PlayStation 2:

Electronics giant Sony has sparked a major row over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console.

…

At the event, guests competed to see who could eat the most offal – procured elsewhere and intended to resemble the goat’s intestines – from its stomach.

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