It was a big day in pie related news today. I took my seat at The World Championship Scotch Pie Awards today and had the pleasure of watching James Pirie & Son from Newtyle being crowned world champions for the second time, their first success being in 2018. What an honour I’m sure you’re thinking, for me and for them. Despite being born in Scotland I wasn’t born with an inbuilt love of Scotch Pies, but being Scottish has certainly allowed for the opportunities to sample my fair share over the years and develop suitable levels of admiration. It was in that case a real pleasure to try last years winner from The Little Bakery in Dumfries which was served for lunch.
The man sitting next to me at the table was a two time world champion himself and it was interesting to hear him describe the pie as slightly too meaty, he preferred his filling to ever so slightly crumble apart. I took this in while devouring mine and deciding he was probably right but that I was too much of a philistine to really worry about these finer things. I love meeting people who take these kinds of things so seriously, it’s never just a pie you know. I was hoping it would be more of a funny humorous event but the comedy value seemed lost on most folk there. The big bellied old bakers took the whole event very seriously, as they should, but still it’s always good to take the piss out of yourself when you’re at the world pie awards.
The presenter Carol Smilie, reasonably famous twenty years ago and still a total babe, cracked a few jokes about pies and spent the whole time taking photos with each winner as they gave her the old reach around. Bakers, by the nature of the extreme intensity of their job, are quite often total crazy characters and I enjoyed watching them come onto stage, some milking the adulation and giving Carol a good squeeze, some completely uncomfortable and putting their arm around her but barely making any real contact and the odd old perv clearly pushing the boundaries of whether they were copping a feel or not. It must be said she was a consummate professional throughout.
I, or more precisely my mates bakery that I was there representing, won the bronze award for best quiche lorraine. Their quiche comes in a pie shell, you see what they did there, very smart. Unfortunately there were more than one bronze winners each time so I had to share the stage with someone who despite my best efforts, got up there before me and next to Carol. I was really looking forward to giving her a good squeeze, if only I could remember the name of this other persons bakery I would officially boycott it forever.
All in all though the day may have lacked in pie related anecdotes and there was no Ricky Gervais to create any controversy but I got to eat a one time best pie in the world, win someone else’s award and meet a celebrity from the nineties. Can’t think of many better things to do midday on a Tuesday in January.
Observations and Misunderstandings 