"You can only eat the nettles we supply," said judge Richard Hooper, who grows them in his field outside the village. "Also you have to keep them down. If you spit them out, or anything worse, it doesn't count. Anyone who goes to the toilet is automatically disqualified." Which brings us to the delicate problem of what seasoned stinger scoffers know as "green bearding". This tends to occur with the onset of facial paralysis and judges must pay close attention to the amount of emerald-hued drool being emitted.