FEBRUARY 29, 2004

IT'S not often I get to revisit an old friend as so many of them are buried in my back garden, but in this case it's a website and they're pretty impervious to chainsaw assaults.

I imagine both of you remember the column I did on IFOCE (International Federation of Competitive Eating), and this week, my children, it’s time to visit one of its distant cousins – the Spamarama. This, as you may have guessed from its name, is a) held in America (Austin, Texas, to be precise) and b) in the words of the website is “A Festival to Celebrate an American Icon”. I bet Neil Armstrong is ecstatic that he’s been upstaged by tinned meat, but there you go.

The site (spamarama.com) also promises “All the fun you have come to expect from the Greatest Potted Pork Party on the Planet”, and if that isn’t a statement that could be taken in more ways than one, then I’m a sporting genius. Hang on a minute. . .

Spamarama is a collection of thrilling events: there’s the Spam Jam, with such musical luminaries as, er, The Uranium Savages and Grupo Fantasma, the great Spam Cook-off where professional and amateur chefs get to show off their talents with the pink flabby stuff, and the Spam Olympics.

These not only allow the competitors to compete in such events as the Spam Toss, the Spam Cram and the Spam Relay, but also provide the justification for me putting this in my column.

The festival goes back to 1978, when on April Fools’ Day the first Spamarama was held. Local boys Dick Terry and David Arnsburger decided to hold a cooking competition with a difference – to see if anyone could make Spam taste good. It grew from there, and on its silver jubilee in 2003 the show was blessed with a one-hour documentary on TV. Over the years it’s grown in size and now attracts almost 10,000 rednecks – I mean visitors – to gaze in awe at what can be done with the subject of Monty Python’s finest song.

This year’s is being held on April 3 in Waterloo Park, Austin, so if either one of you happens to go, let me know what it’s like and I’ll personally pay for your Rennie prescription.