World Custard Pie Championships 2016

The rules for this Championship are very simple, well they would be wouldn’t they! Every team is made up of four (4) people each wearing fancy dress, they stand behind a table and throw the pies at their opponents eight feet away. As for the scoring, a direct hit in the face is 6 points, 5 points for the chest, 3 points on the arm and if you miss three times points are deducted. And, as with any other sporting competition the judges’ decision is final Organisers ordered flour for the Pie Throwing Championships (mixed with water); they didn’t use real custard as they didn’t want to be seen as wasting food but the ‘pies’ were of the runny variety!30 UK teams and 1 from Japan participated in this messy slapstick contest at Coxheath in Kent on Saturday (4th June). Bouts or heats lasted anywhere from 15 seconds to 30 seconds. Among those taking part were teams with names such as “The Fairy Cakes”, “Pie Face”,“Custard Tarts” and “Clash of the Pietans”. Teams battled it out in a knock out style event, culminating in one team being crowned world champions. The history of the World Custard Pie Throwing Championship began back in June 1967 and was created by Mike FitzGerald who later became Mayor of Maidstone. In its early days only men were allowed to join as they thought it was unacceptable for women to compete - this however, eventually changed. Before long worldwide teams were attracted to the Championships and teams came from Japan, Canada, Finland and Germany have competed in previous years. This tradition came to an end in 1987 when the trophy was lost and never found. The Championships was resurrected in 2007.However a team from Japan, ITTE Q, the 2015 champions once again competed this year. They attracted a large group of Japanese supporters. This years championships was won by the team called ‘The Custardteers’ who beat ‘Three Men And A Pie’ in the final. This was filmed by HUTC for news distribution – the copyright remains with HUTC