The Comedians Beer Mat Flipping Championship stopped by Islington’s Pleasance Theatre on Friday in an event featuring a world record attempt.
Phil Wang triumphed over fellow comedian Helen Bauer in a tense final having already seen off Ed Gamble, Ruby Carr, Elis James, Jordan Gray, Rosie Jones and Celya AB.
But Stuart Laws’ attempt to break the world record for individual beer mats flipped in a minute (74) came up 14 short.
Laws said: “I think we need a very long table, and there needs to be no replacing of mats.
“I can flip them quicker than they can be replaced and so there was a real panic, I was bumping into people, and then the mats were placed down on the table very haphazardly.”
Laws, hosting alongside Sikisa, said he grew up around the sport of beer mat flipping.
He said: “Me and my dad used to go to working men’s clubs and pubs, and he would teach me how to do that, and then I got a bit obsessed with trying to do as many as possible.
“I remember even as a nine, 10, 11-year-old, being able to do 25 beer mats in one stack, and it being the absolute limit my hands could hold.”
As an adult, Laws said the idea came back around to him when writing a show about his father who passed away a decade ago.
He said: “Anytime I do it around friends, everyone gets involved, and it becomes like a competition.
“So I was like, ‘let’s turn that into some sort of competition with comedians doing it.’”
Laws and Sikisa hosted the first show in 2023 and he said the format is still evolving.
He said: “We are still in the experimental phase where we like trying to make sure we’re not locking it down too much into a slick format.
“Eventually, if we get lucky enough to develop it for TV, we want to have been like, ‘we tried this on one show, and it was great.’”
Friday’s event saw Wang beat 20,000/1 pre-tournament odds to claim glory, four times longer odds than bookies gave Leicester City before their surprise 2015/16 Premier League title triumph.
Laws said: “I underestimated him, I thought he’s not got the skills to do it.
“I believed in Ruby (Carr). Ruby is very good at beer mat flipping, and this happens to the best of us in front of an audience.
“Suddenly it becomes a tense thing, the mindset goes, and then the flipping fails.
“She choked, and that can happen in elite sports.”
To win the head-to-head final, contestants started on 100 and reduced their score by the number of mats successfully flipped, before finishing on a double flip, darts-style.
Flipping mats with each hand required a different skillset and Wang eventually converted the insurmountable lead he had built up over Bauer after several cracks at it, evoking the end of Ivanisevic-Rafter.
Laws failure to break the record meant Ashrita Furman’s tally was safe for now, alongside the more than 200 others he holds, according to the Guinness World Records’ website.
But was bullish about the distinction between most mats flipped in a minute and most flipped at once.
Laws said: “As many in one go is just dependent on hand size. I don’t like sports that are literally just about who is the biggest or the strongest.
“Football and tennis I think are great because you can be any sort of size; you’ve got [Manchester City’s] Erling Harland and you’ve got Bernardo Silva on the same pitch.
“And that, I think, is true sport.”
Featured image: Paul Gilbey
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