A Guy Misplaced His Wallet at Reading 2003 and Now There's a Drinking Competition in His Honour

If there is one thing we are good at here in the fair UK (OK yes other than colonialism and claiming 'tea' as a personality) it is getting absolutely hammered. Wankered. Blotto. Smashed. Twatted. Ruining our lives with alcohol. It is the national pastime.

Our favourite time of year for getting pissed, of course, is the summer, and there's nowhere better to do it than a music festival. And yeah, music festivals exist all over the world, certainly. But here in the UK, the music is often secondary to seeing how off your tits you can get as you park a badly assembled tent in a spot that will definitely flood if it rains, on a seemingly lawless campsite, where people drink beer like water and teenagers rule the roost. It is our culture.

All of this is to say that Reading Festival, one of the more notoriously rowdy festivals in the UK festival calendar, home to 18-year-olds who make the pilgrimage to watch Arctic Monkeys and get their first STIs during the summer before university, has recently lived up to its reputation as a hallowed drinking site, via a revelation made by one Tim Burrows:

Basically the story goes that Tim – perhaps a bit worse for wear himself, down in that 2003 Linkin Park (!) pit – misplaced his wallet at Reading 2003, and some friends of a lad named Giles picked it up, used a tenner out of it to buy White Lightening (if you've never had the pleasure of vomiting it up on yourself in a park: it's white cider, and it's horrible). Usually that would be the end of the story, but Giles et al are kind of honourable men. They have not forgotten Tim's contribution, and ever since that fateful Reading Festival, have held an annual cider-drinking competition named after Tim – "The Timothy Burrows Challenge" (surely the only thing this can possibly involve is downing a load of cider? Maybe an assault course?) I can think of no higher accolade.

Rocked to my core by this tale of intrigue, I got in touch with Tim to find out how he was feeling about the whole thing. Was it even his wallet? What are his views on his namesake competition? Will he be taking part (maybe as a judge?) He told me:

See, alcohol and music festivals. The great UK tradition, bringing people together. Let's hope Tim's best cider drinking days are only ahead of him.

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(Image via Wikimedia Commons)