Wigan's World Pie-Eating Championships cancelled due to Covid-19 pandemic

The renowned scran fest which has received international media coverage in the past has, for the second year running, become the latest victim of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However organisers have held out hope that, like the summer just gone’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, it might be rescheduled for some point next year.

The championships, held annually at Harry’s Bar on Wallgate, have become a favourite fixture in the pre-Christmas but not so sporting schedule, and it means that reigning 2019 champion Ian Gerard will be holding on to his title for at least several months more.

The main sticking point appears to be the conflict between putting food in the mouth - the contest involves the devouring of one pie in the shortest possible time - and wearing a mask!

Organiser and piemaster Tony Callaghan said: “Having to wear a mask during the competition itself, but not before or after, has proven to be a fundamental hurdle.

“No mask is required in a hospitality setting, but masks are legally required in an indoor sports stadium. Any other elite sport would find a way of getting round pandemic restrictions, but we’ve been gagged.

“We looked at staging the event outside on the pavement, but there’d be 30-odd lads and lasses and their coaches - in some cases 38-seaters - and some of these lads are big units, meaning they could easily be mistaken for traffic islands if caught in the wrong light through a rainy windscreen.

“Pandemic rules mean that competitors can have a pint and a bag of pork scratchings pre-event, but as soon as they enter the competition arena up back’t bar area they have to wear a mask.

“Government guidelines are gobble-degook. Or gobble-avoidance-degook. There is an argument that the actual competitors in indoor sports don’t have to wear masks, but Government guidelines make no reference to that. And if people like Lewis Hamilton have to wear a face covering during competition, then that’s all the guidance we needed.

“The technical members of the organising committee experimented with things like pureed pie, angled straws and funnels, as well as those things plumbers use to seal the gap between bath and wall tiles, to allow pie consumption while still wearing a mask but there wasn’t an elegant solution resulting in less than half-an-hour to consume a pie when we’d be expecting around 30 seconds in a sporting environment. This event has always been a sprint not a marathon.

“As for staging a virtual event on Zoom this would have proved impractical because we don’t have enough plug holes or internet capacity in the pub for dozens of competitors to bring their computers in.”

Mr Callaghan said that Harry’s Bar is now considered breaking with decades of tradition and staging the event away from its traditional mid-December fixture date.

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