THE World Porridge Making Championship has been won by an Englishman for the first time.
In a blow to national pride, the top prize this year was taken by London-born Ben Horsbrugh, who now lives in Germany, in the 19th world championship held in Carrbridge in the Highlands yesterday.
It is only the second time the title and the Golden Spurtle have left these shores. It crossed the Atlantic to America in 2009.
However, Horsbrugh, 45, said: "I'm from Scottish roots. I can trace my family back to the 1390s to the Peebles area. So I suppose today I was flying the flag for the old country."
He also revealed that his Scottish intuition played a part in overcoming his 15 rivals from Denmark, Sweden, US, Scotland and England.
The annual competition attracts spectators and porridge fans from far and wide, with the furthest-travelled competitor Laurie Figone from California.
Figone, who has her own TV show, Cooking With Laurie, won the best speciality porridge title.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article