It all started at a crab-apple fair in rural England way back in 1269. King Henry III himself had given the fair a royal charter, so I suppose a lot of people felt compelled to eat the crab-apples, which, being ridiculously bitter, made the eaters pull funny faces, and for a bit of fun, they decided to make a contest out of it. Almost 800 years later, the crab-apple fair is still an annual event, as is the gurning contest, although nowadays it draws contestants from all over the world. (The etymology of “gurn” is a bit muddy, though the venerable OED guesses that its provenance might be Scottish, and related to the word “grin.” In Northern Ireland, on the other hand, the word has a very different meaning — “to cry.”)
Over the years, serious gurners have developed a number of winning strategies, the most effective of which is to have no teeth, which makes one’s facial features much easier to warp. England’s best-known gurner, Peter Jackman, had his teeth removed in 2000 to facilitate extreme gurning (even though he had already won the world championship four times — so dogged was he in the pursuit of gurn-fection). Three years later, he died in a golfing accident. Which is nothing to gurn about.
I found two great videos of gurning competitions, the first from the 1960s, the second from the 80s. Something that won’t make sense unless I explain it: it’s tradition for gurners to gurn with their faces framed by a horse collar, known as “gurnin’ through a braffin’.”
Image by thebrier.
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It doesn’t get much better than that. You see something like this and you can’t help but to smile. Fantastic.
posted by Eric on 3-4-2010 at 8:23 am
Looks to me like I’ll need to buy my granddad a plane ticket and get him noticed. He has some talent the world is CLEARLY missing out on… HAHAHA!
posted by Kate on 3-4-2010 at 9:46 am
FANTASTIC! This seriously made my day like ten times better! Just another reason to head to England, a face-pulling competition!
ReCap: Dejected It…what dejected it, and what is it?
posted by tess on 3-4-2010 at 11:10 am
Tradition, noun; an explanation for something that makes no sense.
posted by Matt on 3-4-2010 at 11:24 am
“Gurn” = “grin,” I think. In the Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brien, the sailors on the forecastle amuse themselves on Sundays by grinning through a horse collar. And O’Brien was a pretty meticulous scholar, when he wasn’t just making things up.
posted by fred petrick on 3-4-2010 at 1:29 pm
Does this mean that the guy who used to do “Bitter BEer Face” on those Old Milwaukee commercials was a face-puller? I just always assumed it was a primitive form of CGI or something…
posted by FizzyGurrl on 3-4-2010 at 2:02 pm
OK, I’m missing something here! He died in a golfing accident???? Died while playing GOLF?? Now that’s a piece of trivia I’d like to hear more about.
posted by Mag on 3-4-2010 at 3:33 pm
OK, apparently (according to the source of all knowledge – Wikipedia) he died when a cliff face collapsed under him on a golf course in Spain.
ReCaptcha – troubling shrapnel – I would think so
posted by Mag on 3-4-2010 at 3:36 pm