Pressure had grown to end the annual competition after three more people were killed, pierced by the poison-laden quills of the ball-shaped flower sea urchin (toxopneustes pileolus)
Competition organiser Barney McFee said people had been throwing the deadly urchin for as long as he could legally remember. “Beyond a small number of agonising fatalities, everyone has a great day out – and all the money raised goes straight into the pockets of the bereaved.”
Are kidding me? Stop doing this
Public health stickler Dr Guinevere Green said, “For God’s sake, people are dying. Last year a child went blind. Listen to what I’m saying. A child went blind. How many more people have to suffer to indulge Mr McFee?”
Professor Simon Collier, an expert in coastal folklore, told a reporter from The Biscuit, “You must understand, this so-called tradition started in 2006 when Mr McFee was found fleeing the bloated corpses of his ex-wife and her lover, each skewered with multiple urchin spines. He only avoided jail because he discovered a loophole in the town’s original Saxon charter which offered an amnesty to perpetrators of maritime fatalities on feast days.”
Mr McFee said, “If my heartless ex-wife and her bastard lover had bent their knees and pouched the urchin with soft hands, they’d be alive today, standing shoulder to shoulder with me in preserving this charming Pickford tradition.”