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The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held every May in what is now Athol, a small town named, probably by someone with a lisp, after the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This town is in the Cotswolds of England, probably; hence the name, probably.

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rdfs:label
  • Cotswold Olimpick Games
rdfs:comment
  • The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held every May in what is now Athol, a small town named, probably by someone with a lisp, after the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This town is in the Cotswolds of England, probably; hence the name, probably.
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dcterms:subject
dbkwik:uncyclopedi...iPageUsesTemplate
Revision
  • 5703642(xsd:integer)
Date
  • 2013-06-15(xsd:date)
Align
  • right
Width
  • 25(xsd:integer)
quoted
  • true
BGCOLOR
  • #FCFCFF
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  • center
Source
  • —Flyer advertising the Games of 1815
Quote
  • On Thursday in White-week, On that Highly-renowned and universally admired spot called Mount Olimpus , the sports will commence with a grand match of Boast about your home county to be played by 9 or 7 men on a side. Each side must appear at the coffee table by 3 o'clock in the afternoon, when tea shall be served. This event is followed by the drunken riot of visitors from whomever's county lost for belts and others prizes. Also the sack race and egg and spoon race second round shall continue in the primary school playground, where Johnny is predicted to fall over 50 times and Harry is expected to wet himself before crossing the line. A special re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo is to be held to mark the victory of the Duke of Wellington over the French in Belgium of this year, in which the local old biddy re-enactment group will face off against local chavs.
abstract
  • The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held every May in what is now Athol, a small town named, probably by someone with a lisp, after the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. This town is in the Cotswolds of England, probably; hence the name, probably. The Games began in 1612, and have continued, more intermittently than the region's electricity, to the present day. They were started by a local lawyer, Cliff Dover, who said he had the approval of the current King of England, a claim you virtually had to make in order to sanction a crowd of thousands of mostly drunk Englishmen. Dover's motivation in organising the Games may have been his belief that physical exercise was necessary for the defence of the realm, but he may also have believed that accretion of lucre was necessary for the defence of his own old age. Consequently, steep admission fees were charged to all classes of society, including royalty on one occasion, and His Majesty actually paid it, the doddering old coot. Events included running, jumping, stumbling, arguing politics, nit-picking (combs provided), wrestling, and various dares involving the hurried consumption of alcohol. Booths and tents were erected in which small wagers were made and abundant food was supplied, the bets generally involving the amount of time that the patron would be able to contsume the food within a given time. A temporary wooden structure called 'Dover Castle' was erected for people to watch or compete in the events. It came complete with small cannons that were fired to begin the events, a tradition that continues to the present day in pubs throughout England whenever punters fail to disperse on the usual, more discreet, signal, "Time, gentlemen." Many Puritans disapproved of such festivities, particularly on a Sunday, a church holiday, a bank holiday, or a cable-television holiday. By 1625, many had forbidden their workers to attend such festivities, some in fact insisting that they stay sober and on the job. The games were discontinued in 1643, started again in 1661, off again in 1852, and on again in 1966. Events have included dwarf-throwing, bottle-smashing, smash-and-grab robberies, and other activities otherwise happily confined to the Americas. The "Olympicks" have been called "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings", more or less by the same pundits who also see the rough-house shenanigans at The Hobgoblin Pub as England's first halting foray into Parliamentary government.
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