UFO Info Week-End

Any sauce served with it is complementary a fine balance between pungent sweet smoky and hot

Any sauce served with it is complementary, a fine balance between pungent, sweet, smoky and hot. I sulked and offered threats and bribes to find out which team had served us, table three, with sample five, but was unsuccessful.This is the serious side of the competition But there are less earnest aspects. Many visitors turn up to the venue at Tom Lee Park, right on the banks of the brooding Mississippi, just for a good time. People like the deeply engaging Tommy and JD, both retired firemen, who sit outside their competition area cooking up a few ribs and talking to anyone wandering by Even the frat-boy loudmouths are nice as pie. They make a particularly sodden area of the rain-soaked park into a world-class mudslide to wow the crowds. Hunky Texans swap their swagger for tutus and pig snouts in the Miss Piggy competition.

And, on approaching two gentlemen up to their shoulders in pig viscera as they ready themselves for the whole hog competition, they invite me up, on hearing my accent, for tea and a crumpet. They then introduce the true object of their affections, a deceased porker named Nathan McSwine.And over with the best-named team in the competition – Ribs for Her Pleasure – cooking seems to take a back-seat. They’re far too busy setting up a replica of a local “exotic lounge” – complete with low-slung sofas and thumping sound system – that’s owned by the dapper * and showy Mr Hollywood Raiford. I visit them after a torrential downpour to find the sofas looking like they have exploded. “We had everything going on pretty good last night,” says Troy Glasgow, leader of the Ribs for Her Pleasure gang.

“Then a family of possums bolted out of this sofa and across the dancefloor and out. They must’ve hid there for a few days – the sofas were stored up in a barn through the winter, and I guess they nested up.”Next, I catch up with the only all-women team Billie Metcalfe is the smallest head cook I’ve seen here “Yeah, 113lbs,” she says. “But I can lift my own weight, I’m strong.” I don’t doubt it. Do the Pink Ladies All-Girls BBQ Team do many events? “No, our focus is on this one.

It’s the grandaddy of the world, and we’re looking to be top-25.”It’s tough for teams such as the Pink Ladies to compete to win. The “circuit” means that many groups are backed by big sponsorship money – everyone from car dealers to multi-nationals, who use these events to entertain their local clients. The Viking Cooking Team is here to cook, but also to show off one of its new top-of-the-line Viking barbecues. Beaulieu Vineyards is a sponsor, hoping to get people to try wine with ‘cue rather than beer. To be honest, if they handed out free samples, the crowd would try engine oil with their ribs.Al Roker, NBC’s jokey weatherman, has entered a team and is reporting from the event.