Videos of Normal British Lads Destroying Their Intestines with Super Hot Chillies

YouTube is probably the greatest anthropological project ever launched. It has managed to expose the multitudes of the human condition more than any other medium ever created, and allowed people to express themselves in more diverse ways than at any point in history. This weekly column is an outlet for me to share with you some undiscovered gems, as well some very well-trodden gems, and discuss just what it is that makes the chosen accounts so intriguing.

WHO: Clifton Chilli Club
WHAT: Sweaty British people eating chillis at fetes.
HOW MANY SUBSCRIBERS AT TIME OF WRITING: 37,728
WHY SHOULD I CARE: There's something slightly untoward about seeing a row of Brits lined up on a table ready to partake in some joint summertime food banter. Food banter is usually the preserve of our American cousins – hot dog eating competitions, pie eating competitions, dumpling eating competitions, hot dog pie eating competitions: you name it, those motherfuckers will eat too much of it in front of a throng of whooping children and mothers while a terrible compere cracks wise about the girth of the main contender. You need only look to previous YTCOTW star Matt Stonie to find evidence of their star-spangled gluttony.

Over here, though, people are a little more meek. Don't be fooled by the braying Lol-hyenas you see Stephen Mulhern joking with on whatever crud game show ITV have been forced to pump out last minute – we're still a shy and retiring nation of strange, awkward freaks. This trait reveals itself gratuitously when red-faced bods are forced in front of crowds at summer fairs, whether it's as a magic show participant or, as is the case here, a contender in a chilli eating competition.

When it comes to British chilli eating, the Clifton Chilli Club is about as big a name as you'll find. They're in attendance at a bunch of annual chilli and food festivals, enlisting around ten people a time to munch on their peppers, which range from the pathetic Padron pepper (500 Scoville units, the scale used to determine the spiciness of a chilli) to the upsettingly painful Trinidad Scorpion, which comes in at a bitchin' 1.5 million Scovilles and up.

Men dressed as sailors, guffawing dads and girlfriends out to prove something sit at the table and harm themselves greatly. Sometimes they vomit up all the deep red chillis into a bin, as if excising themselves of a particularly placenta-esque demon from hell.

If you thought sunglasses looked cool, then I'm here to tell you, friend, that they're not. At least, whenever these blokes wear them, they look powerfully uncool. There's a certain type of person who, having watched a few of these videos, tends to go in for the chilli-eating contest. They seem to be fairly nondescript men in their twenties and thirties who still gel their hair spiky, who still wear slogan T-shirts. They have shorts with pockets that don't go anywhere. They don't even buy their own shoes. Their shoes suck. They get put in a lot of headlocks by bigger blokes. But this is their moment, a time when they can prove their manliness, their sense of endurance, while a cheering crowd goads them into unimaginable gastric agony.

Clifton Chilli Club do some other stuff, like sauce reviews and recipes, but it's these little treats – these little windows into the Normal Lad's psyche – that pique my interest the most.

@joe_bish

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