At the strangest festival of the year, lowly earthworms take centerstage. People seek to find the best way to lure them out.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to what could just be Britain's wackiest festival.
00:05This is the Worm Charming Championship,
00:08and every year teams compete on the Cornish coast
00:11to entice the most worms from the soil,
00:14with some techniques less scientific than others.
00:19By being sexy worms, we're charming the worms with the sex.
00:24Are you having any luck so far?
00:26Yeah, we've got three pretty worms so far.
00:30Across the field, six-year-old Sunny and eight-year-old Luna are laser-focused.
00:38They're the defending champions, and aren't keen to see their title wriggle away.
00:52Last year they bagged 20 worms,
00:54but with competition fierce, they're going to have to dig deep.
00:59Teams can come up with their own weird and wonderful ways to woo the worms
01:03by creating vibrations in the soil.
01:06Luna and Sunny are taking their lead from the birds,
01:09who peck or stamp to mimic rain.
01:19Elsewhere on the field, others are taking a less cautious approach.
01:29How's it going so far?
01:31Really well, actually. I think it's got maybe like eight worms or something.
01:35Worm welfare's key here, with strict rules in place to keep these useful creatures unscathed,
01:40and event organiser and local artist Georgia Gendles
01:43just as keen to celebrate the serious as the silly.
01:48They hold this weird balance between incredibly important and incredibly absurd,
01:54so I think they're like very intriguing characters,
01:58and they're just incredibly important for our soils and our food systems,
02:02but at the same time they're almost like a hidden creature that we don't know much about.
02:07With seconds to go, the teams blast out their final vibrations.
02:17Charming over, the count begins, and the competition moves from the soils to the spoils.
02:23I think it's a really fun event,
02:25but I think there is quite a serious element in terms of the competitiveness that people...
02:30Everyone tries to hide it, you know.
02:32No one wants to admit that it's really serious and they want to take it, you know.
02:35Everyone wants to win, but I think secretly,
02:37like when you're standing next to the booth where people are counting up,
02:41you hear all the chatter.
02:43I think I've got 12 there.
02:4512? Is that OK?
02:47It's the moment of truth for Sunny and Luna,
02:49and it's not the result they wanted,
02:51as the Tennessee Worm Wranglers swoop to victory.
02:55Yee-haw!
02:56With a whopping 32 worms.
02:58Luckily, Luna and Sunny are sporting to the end.
03:01It's not about winning, it's about having fun.
03:05You are very sweet, son.
03:06They promise to come back next year
03:08to reunite with their perhaps rather muddled, muddy friends.