Wigan's World Pie-Eating Champs: time capsule plan for endangered pastry

And now organisers of the World Pie Eating Championships in Wigan fear meat and potato-filled pastry could be next on the extinction list.

So they are planning to preserve one forever in the world's leading time capsule repository: the Hallstatt Memory of Mankind in Austria.

"It's the obvious thing to do. We're sending a pie to the future," said piemaster Tony Callaghan, owner of the Pie Noon championship venue Harry's Bar in Wallgate, Wigan .

"We did actually send a pie into space a few years back, but unfortunately it didn't make it into permanent orbit, but instead froze and crashed into a field near Burnley.

"We need Elon Musk on board for 2025 if we're not legislated out of existence," added Tony.

"But every year we have to navigate woke-ness, health and safety, ingredient regulations and somebody from the Department for Health and Social Care (he/him) turning the knot on what we can and can't do at Pie Noon in Wigan on what has become an annual town-stopping date," he said.

"So before it's forgotten like icons such as C&A, MFI and Rumbelows, we'll be sealing a pie in a vacuum pack, preserving for eternity a championship pie and sending it to a place that will hopefully record it forever, and maybe even open the seal in centuries to come when Star Trek-like food technology will allow it to be returned to its original sell-by date condition for a taste of Wigan in 2024," he said.

"We'll also include some chips and gravy to ensure the quality of taste of a championship pie and its accoutrements can be fully savoured."

The 27th pastry showdown takes place at 12pm on Thursday December 12 at Harry’s Bar.

Current champ is Barry Rigby, a 50-year-old warehouse assistant from Wigan, who won the 2023 competition, setting a time of 34.5 seconds.

The cooked dimensions of the official regulation pie are a diameter of 12cm and a depth of 3.5cm, and a pie wall angle from base to top of between zero and 15 degrees. Ish.