LONDON — Wearing their finest tweeds, stroking their sideburns and filling the air with pipe smoke, competitors and spectators gathered for The Chap Olympiad, an annual celebration of the classic English gentleman.
Hundreds of "chaps" and "chapettes" descended on a leafy square in central London on Saturday for the sporting social occasion, where regular pastimes are overlooked in favour of smoking pipes, ordering butlers about and swilling cocktails.
The event is the annual summer bash of The Chap, a bi-monthly magazine celebrating the English gent, his eccentricity, courteous behaviour, impeccable dress and devotion to facial hair. In its 12th year, it now has 10,000 readers.
"It's a sports day for people who don't like sport," said organiser Gustav Temple, The Chap's editor.
"It's unfair that chaps who spend most of their time filling their pipes, pressing their trousers and mixing dry Martinis don't get a chance to compete," he told AFP.
The 10 events include the pipeathlon -- sauntering, bicycling and being carried by servants while smoking a pipe -- butler baiting, ironing board surfing and moustache wrestling.
Read more.
See also reporting in The Independent and The Chap and see flickr gallery.
When members of the House of Lords aren't sleeping in the chamber, they may possibly be engaging in similar antics at the Palace of Westminster.
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