The Gurning Is Judged on How Far Your Face Moves and the Fair Has a Charter From 1267

The World Gurning Championships are held in the Market Hall at Egremont in Cumbria on the Saturday evening of the Crab Fair, which this year falls on 19 September. Listings put the contest at six in the evening. Entry to the fair itself is free.

Competitors put their head through a horse collar, known locally as a braffin, and pull a face. The judging is not on ugliness. It is on the distance travelled between a competitor's ordinary face and the one they produce, which is why the sport has always rewarded the flexible rather than the unfortunate.

Tommy Mattinson holds the men's record. Guinness ratifies eighteen titles between 1986 and 2023, including eight consecutively from 2001, and local reporting adds a nineteenth in 2024. He beat his own father's record of ten. His face is called The Wolf.

Anne Woods won the women's title 28 times. She first entered in 1977 because her sons put her name down as a joke, missed one year when pregnant, took her dentures out to compete and worked to a routine and a piece of music. She was beaten in 2002 by a television presenter. She died in 2015.

Mattinson missed 2025 through illness and the men's title went to Ryan Barton, with Lynn Kelly taking the women's and Kendall Lister the junior.

The fair holds a royal charter granted in 1267 and last year was the 757th. The organisers run two websites, one of which is still advertising 2023.