An eating contest ready-made for ESPN2

If ever something were worth televising, it’s the 9th annual World Nettle Eating Championship, held at the Bottle Inn in Marshwood, England. Competitors must eat as many nettles as they can; progress is measured by the combined length of the discarded bare stems. Nettles, which are wild plants with serrated-edged leaves that sting, strike the casual newsreader as strange/painful things on which to focus an eating contest. The whole thing started with an argument in the Bottle Inn in which a farmer boasted that he would eat any nettles that were bigger than the ones on his property.