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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• 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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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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