Blood, Sweat & Black Pudding

Despite what they tell you in school, the War of the Roses didn’t end. It didn’t end at Bosworth Field. It didn’t end with the death of Richard III. It didn’t end when your dad brought home a box of Lancashire Tea, waging his own war on reality. The War of the Roses is still being fought deep in the psyche – despite the fall of the House of Lancaster, the fall of the House of York – and it is manifest in this stocking-wrapped black pudding that I squeeze in my hand.

The congealed blood-sausage pulses thick from out behind my knuckles. Sometimes I can be a bad vegetarian, dreaming. You’ve heard the Old Tales. You know how they go – cramped on oak benches in dreary village methodist halls being preached to by the gaunt, grey-faced clergy. Adam of the primordial dust and Eve of Adam’s rib, and now in the protracted absence of God we have fashioned a meat obelisk not from flesh and bone, but from the drained liquid insides of gassed swine snorting desperately for salvation in the sterile mist of the abattoir. If pigs have a hell it is the abattoir, and if they have a purgatory, it is ceremoniously dismounting Yorkshire puddings in Ramsbottom at the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships.

Ramsbottom is nestled between hard-on-the-thigh inclines up to Holcombe Moor and Top O’ Th’ Hoof, Bury. On the morning of the championship, a fine, wet mist has settled in the valley. Two steam locomotives of the East Lancashire Railway line pull in besides each other pumping hot air into the bruised clouds overhead. These thin veils of vapour mark the boundaries of transformation – each and every person stepping through washed away of self, and stepping out beyond the waning day in abject failure or triumph eternal.

Coming onto Bridge Street outside The Oaks pub, the palpable energy of the waiting crowd sits heavy on the air. There aren’t just locals here. Photographers from the media are positioned up and on either side of the scaffolding, and there’s a group of people in jokingly misspelled Wolverhampton Wanderers t-shirts that say “Wolverhampton Wangerers”. These are adorned on the back with the number 11 to mark the 11 years that they’ve been coming to the competition. The text above it states “There’s only one Phil Taylor”. A man soon after is announced to be bringing the Golden Grid for contestants to stand on.

“It is a different Grid this year,” I’m later told by last year’s winner, Harry Ogden. “Last year it was an actual smooth, heavy metal grid. If you knocked it, it made a clunking sound. This year it’s not. It’s different.”

One of the old boys from The Oaks, all plump, rosy-cheeked and cracked grin, leans in and tells me that the man carrying the Golden Grid is a Japanese reality TV star. “Yeah, he goes all over the world and does mad shit like this for the people of Japan to watch at home.” He ruminates on it. “I’m in the wrong trade.” The man we’re looking at is Daisuke Miyagawa. You can see the hunger within him. It is eating him. He doesn’t just want to win. He needs to win.

It should be easy, no? Knock some Yorkshire puddings off a wooden plank and walk away in adoration? Harry, the aforementioned Black Pudding Throwing champion 2024, says that it has brought a lot more attention than he thought it would.

“Interviews with worldwide press! I thought it’d be a silly little competition where I’d win bragging rights for a year. Amanda Holden called me love. Spoke to her twice.”

Is there a knack to it? Harry is 6 foot 4 and used to be a goalkeeper. I’m 5 foot 7 and got picked third-to-last for any football in school, but Harry doesn’t think hand-eye coordination is the be-all and end-all. “It’s tunnel vision. You know when you’re plastered and you walk somewhere and you just switch on? That’s what it was with that. I’m not wasting my 20 quid. I’m hitting summat.” When he first threw last year he was four pints in, then he was several Yorkshire puddings down with his name forever etched into the annals of local history.

Despite the joyful chatter and the noise of three different local bands covering The Cranberries’ “Zombie”, there is an absence looming, and I catch one of the Wolverhampton Wangerers’ eyes again, drawn to his friend’s t-shirt epitaph.

Phil Taylor was described to me as a Stubbins legend and the real driving force behind the World Black Pudding Throwing Championship. “People are asking questions today that Phil would have known the answer to,” Harry’s mum tells me. “We went to Chadwicks stall at Bury Market to get some black pudding and the guy there was telling us that Phil passed away, and a week or so later his dog died, so they’re buried together. It would be too easy to say it’s not going ahead after he passed away, but it keeps Phil Taylor’s name alive.”

I remember reading the tributes to him, and the news that the championship would not go ahead again this year. I’d always wanted to go, so I sat there that February morning with my coffee in my hand and vacant eyes washing over the streets outside my window, thinking of Phil, a man I did not know. Thankfully, locals in the community did rally together at the news of his passing and made sure that it happened to commemorate him and the work he poured into making this strange and fervent display of the Weird occur.

Ogden adds that: “he was a very nice, genuine person. At the end, I got his number and we never spoke further, I never messaged, but now his number’s just there. It’s a weird feeling. I only knew him briefly.” Me and Harry sit and contemplate the thought of digital ghosts – something that will only haunt us more as time continues to envelop us.

A group of lads in the corner of The Oaks grab me. “You’ve got to speak to Ged.” Who’s Ged? A fella nestled in the corner waves, desperately clutching onto his pint with the other hand, whilst shaking his head. He doesn’t want to talk. “He’s nervous,” I’m told. “Bad luck,” he seconds. “He’s come second four times, and he’s top right now. He knocked off six!”

I witnessed Ged’s attempts. Ged was second to throw on the day, right after Harry, and he hit someone in the balls. Later on in the day, Ged stepped up with all that past brewing within him. All that tribulation for what may have been. All that which had been snatched away from him in years that had come before. And with a shake of the head, he stepped up and knocked down six Yorkshire puddings. Now he wouldn’t speak to anyone about it, less the fates decree his pride would be his downfall.

I go back to that congealed blood sausage pulsing thick from out behind the joints of my fingers. Clear the head and clear the air. You don’t have the Dutch courage of Harry. You don’t have the history to overcome like Ged. What do you have, Connor Seed? Eight Yorkshire puddings in your line of sight and three black puddings to prove you are the Emperor of Lancashire, just like the George Formby song. Deep breath – and throw. It skims the head of the announcer. He asks you not to actually try and kill the volunteers. Deep breath – and throw. It knocks off two Yorkshire puddings. Four more and you are equal par with Ged. Five more and you have supplanted him. Deep breath – and throw.

It clears the scaffolding, landing somewhere far along Bridge Street, slowly soaking in the rain.

The day carries on and as the minutes ebb away, the competition’s close approaches and the queue to throw the final black puddings stretches far beyond Avanti Hair and Beauty. Daisuke takes another punt, and humbly thanks the crowd as he fails to knock down enough. Harry has a final go, but he’s passed beyond that golden four pint rule. The Wolverhampton Wangerers all take their turns and a want to prove turns to disappointment as the last of the gang sends their black pudding soaring backwards.

A horn is blown and the crowd screams. The celebrations die down. Ged is nowhere to be seen until he is brought from out the door of The Oaks to the news of his victory, his overcoming of the past. Ged is held aloft by his own friends and the Wolverhampton Wangerers, ascending ascending ascending towards the heavens with £120 in tow and a black pudding garland to forever remember the events of this day.

As we head back towards The Oaks, I ask Ged how he’s feeling. He smiles at me with half a wink. “Alright.”

When the crowds have dispersed from the main street, the scaffolding is taken down and the World Black Pudding Throwing Championship banner is folded. Only two things remain: the warm glow of The Oaks, inviting an entire world peering in to do something silly and strange in the protracted death rattle of the West; and a melancholic absence haunting Bridge Street doused in rain. Rest in peace, Phil Taylor. May what you built remain.