If you stop for a drink at Bridge Inn in Holmrook, England, in November, you’d do well to take everything anyone says to you with a grain of salt—or maybe even a whole shaker. That’s because every fall, the Bridge Inn hosts the World’s Biggest Liar competition.
Entrants are given five minutes in the spotlight to tell the biggest and most convincing whopper they can muster. The winner is selected by a panel of judges.
Though George Kemp of Maryport, Cumbria, was suffering from a chest infection, he managed to power through with a yarn about the time he “ended up bumping into Donald Trump and his wife in an underwater hotel.” The night marked his fourth win in the contest.
“It was a tale about building a small submarine out of my dad’s old bubble car,” Kemp said. “We took the bubble car on a trip to the Isle of Man and we bumped into several famous people in a Scottish submarine made out of shortbread tins. [Scottish politicians] Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond sold some of these giant shortbread tin submarines to the United States of America.” The evening ended with Kemp and the president-elect watching an Elvis tribute act called “Shellfish Presley.”
Trump himself wouldn’t have been able to enter the competition, by the way—politicians and lawyers are banned from the contest because they are “too well versed to apply.”
Held since the 19th century, the World’s Biggest Liar competition owes its origin to a pub owner named Will Ritson, who was known for the fantastic stories he would tell to keep his patrons entertained—and drinking longer. One of his most famous lies was that turnips planted in the region grew so big that people had to “quarry” into them for their Sunday lunch, and afterward, the mammoth root veggies were used as sheds for sheep.
Other first-place fibbers have told tales about eating peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches with Prince Charles, traveling to work via camel due to global warming, and fracking for jam.
Kemp donated his prize money to charity—and that’s no lie.
November 22, 2016 – 1:30pm