I was tickled by a feature on Radio 4’s Saturday Live (24 June) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tvjr4 presented by Aasmah Mir and the Reverend Richard Coles, previously one-half of the British pop duo, The Communards. Their brilliant morning show which sadly I now rarely catch is always filled with eclectic conversation, with the most unusual stories being the pull for me.

Last Saturday it was mentioned that The World Egg Throwing Championships 2017 was taking place the following day, Sunday 25^th June.

http://www.eggthrowing.com/world_championship.php

The presenters were speaking to a participant who was explaining the different lobbing styles employed to produce the best outcomes for the distances involved.

This competitor also revealed that The English Sports Council demand that every event in the championship must have some skill to be accepted as a sport by them.

The participant said they had successfully argued that their main event, Egg Throwing involved more skill than javelin throwing, where you have the one competitor throwing a long spear. With Egg Throwing, there are two competitors, a tosser and a catcher. Catching ten metres apart – expanding after each successful toss and catch – takes some skill and you can’t really argue with that. Smile.

But it was the mention of the Russian Egg Roulette event that had me chuckling.

It’s a game involving 6 eggs; 5 hard-boiled and 1 raw. The winners will have had to identify the hard boiled eggs without touching them, smashing the chosen egg over their heads for the results.

If that wasn’t amusing enough, apparently, the English Sports Council would not accept this event as a sport as they felt it held no skills whatsoever. No problem. The competitors argued that their introduction and use of ‘Reiki’ and ‘Aura watching’ – involving the skill of feeling the “life force of the egg” to identify the raw from the hard – made it a skilled sport. It was on that basis it was accepted.

Now there’s an image.