When the newest member of the Burton Mail’s editorial staff, Keith Bull, was assigned the job of researching the latest digital craze to hit the sleepy little village of Fenny Bentley near Ashbourne, he leapt at the chance.
Until he realised that the digits had nothing to do with checking out the latest electronic gizmo – and everything to do with his feet and the world’s most toe-curling sport, toe wrestling.
Here, Keith ‘Raging Bull’ tells of his experiences of the day….

I arrived in a not-so confident mood, mainly because I feared I would fail the routine foot inspection beforehand because of my ‘footballer’s feet’.

Luckily, however, I passed this easily, and started trying to digest the rules of the competition.

As I was doing so, the first contestants were announced. To my horror, I would be up first, competing against another novice, Mark ‘Hop Toe It’ Hopkins.

We both sat down at our stations and exchanged slightly nervous smiles before having the rules reiterated to us by the referees. When we both made it clear we understood the rules, it was time to lock toes.

As Mark’s big toe was wedged in between my two biggest toes, I was starting to realise how much this was going to hurt, and was tempted to ve-toe the whole thing before it had even began. Luckily for me, I could see Mark was suffering similiar discomfort.

Keith faces the Toeminator
Pic: Action Images/Paul Harding