HUGE APPETITE

Hokitika Guardian, 20 December 1933, Page 5

HUGE APPETITE

MAN’S ABNORMAL CAPACITY

SOME EXTRAORDINARY FEATS

LONDON, December 16

Britain’s champion trencherman is dead. He was George W. Leader, fiftyei ght-year-old paper merchant of Middlesborough, and had been ill for six months.

Leader discovered his capacity for mighty eating through a joke and a bet with a friend, and in his heyday was able to consume sufficient for fifty people at one sitting. He was once asked to travel to the United States to compete for the title of world’s champion eater, and a prize of 200 dollars. He cabled the promoter declining the invitation, explainng the prize wouldn’t pay his food bill. .Leader’s biggest challenge came from a giant engineer—£so a side and side bets. It was a handicap, and Leader had to eat one pound of ham and thirteen eggs before the other man started. He won easily, the other man retiring at the sixteenth egg. Competing at Stockton against a footballer who wished to capture Leader’s title, h. a ordered “Twenty-four eggs twice, two pounds of fried eggs twice and tea for two.” The waitress asked fo l ' the money first and the footballer retired at the seventh egg. Fifty pork pies at a sitting, five or six lunches at a time, four dozen eggs and a loaf or so of bread as a pick-me-up—this as nothing to Leader in his prime. He once ate twenty-eight pounds of ha Y for a bet without ill effect.