We speak to Gary Craig, onetime Guinness World Record holder for wearing the most pairs of underpants at the same time.
Gary talks TV appearances, recovery from a heart attack - and gravy wrestling.
Gary talks TV appearances, recovery from a heart attack - and gravy wrestling.
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00:00Hello, it's Gary Craig, a.k.a. the Geordie Pants Man,
00:03former world record holder for wearing the most pair of underpants at one time.
00:07I can't believe it was 2010.
00:09I mean, 15 years ago and still get people bumping into us in the street
00:13and making jokes about how many pairs of pants you're wearing a day, Gary.
00:17You know, 15 years on, it's unbelievable.
00:20Almost as soon as I took the record,
00:21it was taken off as primarily by an American woman,
00:25and I was agreed with that straight away
00:27because she put on 249 pairs of women's knickers,
00:31and I'm sorry, but they just don't have the same thickness and waistband
00:34that a pair of underpants have got.
00:35Every so often, I might go back to it and look at the Guinness records
00:39and see if there's still a record for it,
00:41and for some reason or other,
00:42it seemed as though they'd kind of lost interest in it at all.
00:45I had already been getting quite a few different little telly invitations,
00:49so I'd been featured on Have I Got News For You on BBC.
00:53I'd taken in a couple of cooking-related programmes,
00:56so there was a Great British Taste Tour,
00:57which only did one series,
00:59but I managed to win £1,000 off that.
01:02I was on Britain's Best Dish,
01:06presented a pair of Britain's Best Dish underpants to Mary Nightingale,
01:11did reasonably well in the competition,
01:13lost on a 2-1 vote.
01:14The main thing was that I got myself on Rude Tube,
01:16which was where I came up with the idea of setting the record in the first place.
01:21I was on an Ultimate Champions episode,
01:24and I was on the Christmas Best Most-Watched Clips of the Year,
01:29only at number 94,
01:30but, you know, still another claim to fame.
01:32Because sometimes the TV people,
01:34they don't like you to appear too often
01:36in case you become too well-known,
01:37and then people are thinking,
01:38oh, hang on, I've seen this guy just the other week on such and such a programme.
01:42So it took a little while,
01:44but then the TV started to come back,
01:46and I don't know whether people necessarily know,
01:50but quite often the TV companies approach you
01:54if they think you're a good sport,
01:56I would say, if you're keen to maybe take part.
01:59So I got approached for a programme on ITV called Cannonball,
02:04a pretty extreme sort of water-based competition that was held in Malta,
02:09and basically I was in competition with a bunch of 20-odd-year-old six-packs.
02:16One guy, I think, is trying to become an Olympic sprinter.
02:20This was a sort of standard of athleticism that my opponents had,
02:25and he has me at around the age of 60
02:28trying to compete, as I say, with these water sports.
02:31I somehow managed to wangle my way to the final,
02:33and even though I didn't win, I kind of became the people's champion.
02:38And while I was away, one of the guys that I met,
02:40a guy called Brian Gumley,
02:42he gets involved in all this sort of madness.
02:45Anything that's gone wife-carrying,
02:50anything you can think of that's a bit daft, he'll have a go at it.
02:53And it was him who invited us to think about
02:56the World Gravy Wrestling Championships,
02:58because he takes part every year.
03:01And as it happened, I'd had a heart attack,
03:05for various reasons I'll not go into.
03:07I'd had a heart attack, and I was recovering from that,
03:10and I was fine.
03:13And I basically thought,
03:15am I going to spend the rest of my days
03:17worrying about when the next heart attack's going to come along?
03:20Or can I test myself, and can I just see?
03:24Can I push it?
03:24How far can I push it?
03:26Without dying, preferably.
03:29And so the World Gravy Wrestling Championships came along in 2022,
03:34and I volunteered to take part as the Geordie Pants Man.
03:39And the gravy wrestling itself was just fantastic.
03:42You were taken down into the basement of the pub,
03:45into this dirty, horrible little changing area
03:49with one shower for the 18 people
03:51that were taking part, men and women.
03:52There was only one changing room and one shower.
03:55And just got changed in there.
03:57I bumped into this guy who thought he was sort of
03:59Stone Cold Steve Austin from the wrestling world.
04:03And he put the fear of God into us,
04:05telling us that he would be taken seriously.
04:09He said, some people don't, they take this as a bit of fun,
04:12but he wanted to win.
04:13And I'm thinking, this is not really what I wanted to hear
04:16on my first visit to gravy wrestling.
04:18I thought it was just going to be a bunch of jovial little people
04:21like myself who just wanted to have a bit of a laugh
04:24and wanted to entertain the crowds.
04:26At one stage, it was supposed to be very limited contact.
04:29You were warned at the start, it's all for fun.
04:32If you start getting aggressive,
04:33they'll just take you out of the arena altogether.
04:37There's a proper referee there, proper referee.
04:40But one thing that is proper is the gravy.
04:43Honestly, it's the most horrible, thick,
04:46Lancashire gravy, lumps of fat and all sorts in it.
04:50And to be honest, once you start the fight
04:52and get in the gravy, you're blinded.
04:55You've got a coating of sort of fatty gravy
04:57over your eyes and your face.
04:59And you can barely see who you're fighting with,
05:01never mind throwing them around and kicking them
05:03and all the rest of it.
05:05But no, I had great fun.
05:07I was throwing him out the ring
05:09and then sliding out after him and sitting on his head.
05:12And then he would drop kick me.
05:15And even though there wasn't supposed to be
05:16any bodily contact or any aggression,
05:18he actually hit us with both feet and knocked us flying.
05:22I like gravy on me dinner, but not on meself.
05:27I don't mind eating gravy,
05:28but I don't want to wear any more of it ever again.