British village scraps knob-throwing festival over rising popularity, low supply of biscuits

There are too many people in a British village who want to throw a specialty biscuit around a field.

For over a decade, the Dorset Knob Throwing and Frome Valley Food Fest has been a small event where locals take "knobs" and catapult them as far as they can. 

A knob is a baked treat made of bread dough that looks similar to a scone but is packed with extra sugar and butter. The dough is baked in a low heat oven until it dries out. When finished baking, it is about the size of a tennis ball and feels very hard on the outside, but is very light on the inside.

The demand for knob throwing has been rising each year — and now in 2022, the organizers have had to scrap the popular event.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" said Alexandra Watts, chair of the Dorset knob-throwing contest. "Just goes to show what a silly idea can do."

Watts herself was one of the early knob throwers in Cattistock, near Dorset, England.

"I think someone just literally picked up a knob and thought, 'I'll see how far I can throw this,' " she told As It Happens host Carol Off. "Then a few other people joined in … so we'd all go to the pub car park and throw knobs.

"Before you know it, it's 2019 and we've got 8,000 people and a whole sort of festival going on around this."

An illustrious history

The knob was invented in Dorset more than 150 years ago.

"I think they're named after a button on a military jacket, which is rather random," Watts said. "But yeah, someone thought, 'Oh, that would make a great biscuit.' "

It has also made for some great games, including pin the knob on the door, splat the knob, knob or no knob and guess the weight of the knob. There's even the knob and spoon race, knob darts and a knob pyramid.

People compete in these games at the festival, although the ultimate contest continues to be knob throwing.

In 2012, Dave Phillips set the current record of throwing a knob 96 feet (nearly 30 metres). 

It takes at least 3,000 knobs, according to Watts, to run the knob-throwing competition. And as the desire to shoot the biscuits into the sky grows, the village needs more knobs than the one local supplier can make.

"The actual knob biscuits themselves, we only got agreements from the manufacturer that he could make them last week," she said. "It's all just been so late so it's just made our job impossible, really."

Festival supports hospice

For all the fun and games to be had at the festival, it is also a charity event. The organizers try to raise enough money to support a hospice in Dorset.

That is why next year, the organizers are planning to have the greatest knob-throwing festival yet.

"We just kind of ran out of time, really, to make it happen for this year, which obviously we're really sad about, but we're hoping to come back bigger and better in 2023 with hopefully a partner on board that's going to help us deliver it and make it even more special," Watts said.

Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview with Alexandra Watts produced by Ben Basran.