Name: England’s strongest man.
Age: 26.
Appearance: Very large.
AKA: Paddy Haynes, from Adderbury, Oxfordshire.
How strong do you have to be to be England’s strongest man? Strong enough to roll up a frying pan.
What does that even mean? Exactly what it sounds like: to demonstrate his strongman prowess on BBC Radio Oxfordshire, Haynes put a frying pan over his knee and rolled it up like a burrito.
A rubber frying pan? No, an ordinary metal frying pan.
OK, so how strong is that? Not quite strong enough to be Britain’s strongest man – Haynes finished 10th in that competition in January.
Who won it? Tom Stoltman. He can toss a keg 7.5 metres.
For someone with the title Britain’s strongest man, that doesn’t seem that far. It’s not 7.5 metres long, it’s 7.5 metres high, over a bar set above his head.
And that’s stronger than rolling up a frying pan? Hard to say. Strongman competitions encompass a variety of difficult-to-compare disciplines – the anvil lift, the bus pull, the car carry – each requiring different levels of power, grip strength, agility, skill and strategic thinking.
Strategic thinking? So you can become the world’s strongest man just by being clever? Not unless you can also pull a bus. Then there are antiquity-referencing events, including the Hercules Hold (not letting two huge pillars pull you apart) or the Atlas Stones (shelving big rocks).
Sounds weird. Out-of-competition feats are weirder still. Manoj Chopra, formerly Asia’s strongest man, used to be able to inflate a hot-water bottle with his lungs until it exploded.
That’s quite a niche talent. He could also rip a telephone directory in half.
I don’t know what a telephone directory is, so I’m not sure how impressed to be. Strongwoman Linsey Lindberg, meanwhile, holds the record for crushing apples with her biceps – 10 in a minute.
I can’t imagine a scenario where that specific skill would be required. Say you’re stranded on a desert island with a bunch of apples, and you want cider.
And for some reason I’m in an almighty hurry. We must accept that many of these feats are simply entertaining demonstrations and no accurate measure of anything.
Real strength is, I guess, more of a spiritual thing. No – it’s being able to pound in nails with your fists, and wreck household items.
Do say: “I can’t fit this frying pan into the dishwasher – any ideas, big guy?”
Don’t say: “I entered the Sisyphus Roll and, well, that was a mistake.”
