Local News

Sprout-man fails challenge

Sprout-love Richard Townsend, 24, of Exeter, failed to set a new world record for eating sprouts. We're more concerned as to why he wanted to in the first place.

OK, so it's nearly Christmas and it's obligatory to have at least one sprout on your plate, even if all you do is push it about until you can feed it to the dog, and even he doesn't want it.

The challenge Townsend set himself was to eat as many of the damn things as he could in a minute, trying to beat the current record of 47, set by Dave Mynard, from London in December 2003.

For some reason, to prepare for the event he ate a plate of sprouts every day for the last 6 months, and by the time it came to officially go for the record he'd simply had enough.

"I do not think I could face another sprout for a few days" he said.

Townsend had apparently "peeled then cooked the sprouts for four minutes in order to ensure they were exactly one inch in diameter" although we're not sure if this was something to do with the record attempt or whether he's just a bit nutty that way.

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