A young woman with “two-point-four children” in tow won ‘best behaved’ title in this year’s Great Spitalfields Pancake Race.
Catharine Wooler ran once each with her neice and her nephew who both behaved “exceptionally well,” organisers of today’s Shrove Tuesday event at Old Truman brewery confirmed.
Her team named ‘Two point Four Children’ fooled Alternative Arts who organise the annual bash who assumed it was a young mum-of-two with a happy event on the way, but Catharine vanished before they had time to find out.
[Aunty Cathy contacted the East London Advertiser later, setting the record straight].
“The pancake race is a mad scramble, but well worth doing,” Alternative Arts’ founder Maggie Penhorne explained.
“Clowns keep order and demonstrate how to run while tossing a pancake.
“The secret is practice. But you’re allowed to pick up the pancake if it drops to the ground and continue running—but we don’t recommend you eat it afterwards!”
Organisers had a complaint about someone falling over and one team not obeying the rules.
“But there aren’t any rules,” Maggie added. It’s just fun.”
Best Dressed prize went to a father-and-two-children team called The Rotters, wearing big aprons with cute animal faces.
Five race heats kept the pancakes warm for the 20 relay teams, each with four runners taking it in turns to run with frying pans while tossing them twice to outpace their rivals.
The grand final went to a team from NFP Synegy—but in the scramble, organisers forgot to time them.
Nevertheless, they were “streets ahead” of rivals from two banks, the Shrove Steady Crew from Coutt’s Bank in The Strand crossing the line second and the Barclays Wallies from Canary Wharf coming third.
The winners got an engraved frying pan, bottle of champagne, bags of jewellery from Tatty Devine in Brick Lane and tickets to Lee Hurst’s Backyard comedy club in Bethnal Green.
The pancake bash attracted 20 teams and up to 800 spectators, raising funds for the London Air Ambulance charity’s helicopter based at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. One of the Barclays staff had special praise for the helicopter medics who saved her life recently, after she lost a leg in an accident.
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