Beard - World Beard and Moustache Championships 2013 - Saturday

Friday
Saturday
Sunday

It was a thick head and dry mouth that welcomed me to Saturday morning. But a shower and toothbrush soon sorted me out. I started my beard and moustache grooming with curlers and a hair drier to give it the basic shape, neatened and stiffened it up with a little hair 'clay' and moustache wax, before getting my costume on and then heading to Aldi for breakfast and supplies for the day.

If was over whelming at the Filldehalle with bearded chaps wondering around all over the place speaking dozens of different languages, I had no idea what queue to join or where to stand. I found the wonderful gentlemen of the The British Beard Club, who helped point me in the right direction. It took about 40 minutes of queues and forms and being prejudged. "Yes, you have a beard, please continue". It took a while but I was officially entered, registered and qualified to compete. No sooner was I done with the admin side of the day, and the parade started. We where organised by our country and paraded around main hall to the cheers and applause of the spectators and press.

The competition then started. It was running late, but it didn't matter. The first competitions were for those with moustaches. It was great to such an array of different moustache styles, sizes and colours. Everyone was cheering and supporting the more elegant and distinguished of the hairy brotherhood. It was a slow moving procession but great fun to be a part of. Having German beer also helped make things run a little quicker for the spectators. Some of the people i got chatting to were just brilliant fun. not only did they grow their moustache, but they took on the moustaches entire character. I met this wonderful Finnish chap who was robbed of a top three position in the Dali moustache category. He wasn't shy of the camera.

After moustache categories came the partial beard categories, including fu-man-chu, goatee and partial freestyle. The big guns were starting to come out. I also managed to meet one of my bearded heroes, Mr Willi Chevalier who has an incredible white triple loop moustache and beard. Makes my scruffy attempt look rather amateurish. He was a nice chap who didn't speak much, but was happy to a few photos. Once the partial beards had been judged they moved on to the full beards. This was the real deal, with giant beards and some extravagant costumes. It was late in the afternoon now and the beers were slowly taking their toll, it was getting closer to my category so I was drinking more beers and making more trips to the toilets to work in more and more wax.

When it finally came to my category it was touching on 10 pm, the audience were nicely rowdy, with the Swiss supports going crazy with giant cow bells and the loudest cheering. But they were closely followed in the loudest cheering by the Hungarians who shouted loudly and flashed their sabres (not a euphemism) in encouragement to their favourites and countrymen. It was pretty nerve racking standing amongst the greatest beards in the world, but it was also great fun. When I was invited forward to present my beard to the judges and audience I took the opportunity to jump down form the stage and shake each and every hand of the judges as they had had the longest day of everyone here. I small hat trick for the audience and I took my place back in line and cheered and clapped on my fellow competitors.

The scores were read out, and I was not in last place and definitely outside the top three, so I was very happy we watched the closing ceremony with the winners posing on stage for photos and being handed their trophies. It was close to midnight when we started rolling out the conference centre, and someone had left a trophy on the table so I posed for a quick photo. It was too late in the suburbs to find an open bar to celebrate in, so we headed back to the hotel to wash the wax out of the beard and get some well earned shut eye.

This has been an incredible day and i met some incredible people many thanks to all the teams and organisers involved

http://www.worldmoustachechampion.com/neueSeiten/bart/WM%202013%20LE/welcome.html
http://www.wbma.info/
http://thebritishbeardclub.org/