THE game of knob eating has been removed from an event due to health and safety fears.
The Dorset Knob Festival will take place in July after a gap of five years.
3
3
The quirky event is a celebration of the traditional Dorset knob biscuit — a dry and tough delicacy made from bread dough.
The festival’s highlight is the knob-throwing contest to see who can hurl the pyramid-shaped biscuit the furthest.
However, the traditional knob eating contest has been axed.
Ian Gregory, of the organising committee, said: “We are not doing knob eating this year, we don’t want people choking on a knob. But there will be plenty of other knob games. It will certainly be plenty of good fun.”
Those other knob games include splat-the-knob, putt-the-knob, guess the weight of the big knob, knob darts and knob painting will be going ahead.
There will also be a knob-and-spoon race and pin-the-knob on the Cerne Abbas Giant — a scaled-down outline of the historic chalk figure famed for its huge manhood.
The one-day festival takes place on July 14 at Chilfrome, near Cattistock in Dorset.
It was first held in 2008 and was last staged in 2019 when 8,000 people descended on Kingston Maurward College near Dorchester.
The 2020 and 2021 events were scrapped due to Covid.
And in 2022 it was shelved as it became too big to be run by the small voluntary village committee.
Organisers have now teamed up with the Cattistock Countryside Show and the Dorset Knob Festival will be part of that.
The current record throw of a Dorset knob is 104ft, set by James Vincent-Smith in 2019.
