ATTEMPTED :No. 40 - Eat 50 Pickled Onions In 50 Minutes - FAIL

Well. My second complete task attempted and it turned out to be a surprising, epic fail.  The task was to eat 50 pickled onions in  50 minutes.  Up to now, they have always been one of my favourite snacking foods. From now on, probably not...They weren't even big ones, just the wee silverskin ones. How hard could it be?  Right enough when I counted them out I was surprised to see how big a pile they actually were.

I had actually felt guilty about including this as a 'task' in the first place as I very innocently thought it would be too easy and just really a chance to slot in another '50 of' type task.  The idea initially came about because a colleague challenged me to set a pickled onion Guinness World Record.   Currently, that record is 24 pickled onions in one, yes ONE minute. I kind of knew I wouldn't be able to do that but I was fairly confident this would still be a piece of p*ss, excuse the language. So, onions counted out, Stewart took this pre-attempt smug picture of one who thought this would be easy.

 I have to say, and it might surprise people to know, I have actually already been part of a successful Guinness World Record attempt. Many moons ago when I was still working in London, myself and a colleague - who for this purpose shall be called Lynn B -  dondered down to Trafalgar Square one spring evening to be part of the largest ever assembled Coconut Orchestra. It was organised by the Monty Python team behind Spamalot. In beautiful London sunshine we were all given very special pairs of coconuts and tutored as to how to coconut along to 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life'.' If you're interested it was April 23rd 2007 and can be found by googling 'largest ever coconut orchestra'.

Sorry, I totally digressed because there's not a lot else to say about this - started off nicely munching away but this was far harder than I thought it would be. I ate 41 and still had around 10 minutes to go when I knew it was over...they very quickly 'reappeared' and by the time they stopped 'reappearing' I'd ran out of time.  Couldn't have eaten another one anyway. Two days later and my tongue still feels as if it's burning.  I don't think I'll be going for any other extreme eating challenges any time soon.