GURNING
EXCERPT FROM TRUE BRITS ©JR DAESCHNER

Newsflash-the World's Ugliest Man works in a nuclear power plant, and the World's Ugliest Woman is ... an Avon lady.
That's what they say in Egremont, and they should know. Every year, supposedly since 1267, this hard-luck town outside the Lake District has hosted the World Gurning Championships, where men, women and children compete to pull the ugliest face.

But don't think the naturally ugly-or "oogly"-have an unfair advantage. Contestants are judged on their before-and-after transformations.
"Say you're oogly in the first place, and ya pull a gurn, an you don't look much different," explains champion Peter Jackman. "Well, just because you're oogly doesn't mean to say that ya win it. Because gurnin' means the Art of Pullin' Faces, not oogliness."

Unfortunately, that distinction is lost on some contestants. "There's one lady in particular. She was ugly to start with, and she didn't look any different when she gurned," chuckles organiser Alan Clements. "Then you get fellows like Peter. He's a good-lookin' guy, but he can make himself into a monster-that's what you're lookin' for."

Gold-medal gurners train like Olympic champions, experimenting with different faces until they hit on a suitably ugly mug.

Most give their faces a nickname. All-time champ Gordon Mattinson called his Quasimodo, while the late Ron Looney named his Popeye-though surely his own last name would have worked just as well.

An Australian stands out for having one of the weirdest gurns in recent memory. "He used his eyes-that's never been done before," Clements recalls. "He could actually turn one one way and one the other way."

However, the Aussie's oddball eyeballs weren't enough to convince gurning aficionados. "He was movin' his eyes and showin' his teeth, basically. He didn't do a lot with his face."

In general, amateurs rarely make it to the final round. "They don't really know what gurnin's about," says Jackman. "They've gotta try and learn and look up the rules of gurnin'."

Try as they might, though, first-timers are unlikely to find any regulations for the essentially free-style event.

"Somebody asked me, 'Do you think gurnin's a sport?'" another finalist recalls. "I said, 'It's the oogliest sport in the world. Where else in the world is there an oogly sport like this?'"

READ THE FULL STORY IN TRUE BRITS!