Thousands watch the competition on a live stream. People cheer and chant like it’s a football match
I
n 2020, I was on a camping trip with my Swedish friend, driving through Carrbridge – a village in the Scottish Highlands about two hours from where I live in Aberdeenshire – when we passed a sign saying “Welcome to the Home of the World Porridge Championship”.
It triggered a vague memory of seeing the competition on the news as a child. When my friend looked it up, he found out that the last few winners had actually been Swedish. He started teasing me, saying: “We’re better at making porridge than you.” So I thought, “We’ll see about that.” Two years later, I ended up entering the competition myself.
I work as an app developer, but I’m a decent cook. I’m self-taught – I had a bad bout of food poisoning from a restaurant about 20 years ago, when I was 26, and didn’t fully trust anyone else’s cooking after that. In 2020, I even started a YouTube channel where I cook on camping trips. However, I had no idea what I was getting into when I entered the competition.
