2026 Golden Frying Pan Champions

Have you ever had one of those moments when you realise you've over committed and your stomach fills with dread?

Well that was me on Shrove Tuesday. My boss had asked that I supply a team from my department to compete in the ships pancake tossing race. Yes, you read that right. I naively reached into my 'how to be a good leader' part of my brain and thought that if I'm going to ask them to do this, I should lead by example and join in. So the team of 5 was me plus 4 from the team. With half an hour to go it occurred to me that delegation is also a strength of leadership and maybe I should have considered that instead of the example setting!

The competition would be held on the helipad. A relay race, run in one direction with a frying pan in one hand toss the pancake 5 times en route to a chair which you then have to circle 5 times before running back to your team tossing the pancake a further 5 times and then handing the pan and it's cake namesake to your teammate.

Team Security were thrashed by Team Chefs. I learned a couple of things here, firstly my team are useless in competition. Secondly, Chefs have a definite advantage in tossing pancakes. We were on a loser from the start.

The event was attended by a couple of hundred guests all eager to watch the crew make fools of themselves. It was roasting up there, somewhere around 30 degrees, feeling about 50! 

However.....defeat was soon replaced by hope when without my consent I was asked to make up a motley crew of team members from the losing teams. I opted for two lads from the Galley, an Entertainer and one of my more athletic security team members. Collectively we had a chance to redeem ourselves!

We won the next two races and made it into the final where we would meet our nemeses, Team Chefs! 

At this point I'm fully committed. I've gone from wanting the ground to swallow me up as a result of a terrible life choice to nominate myself to lead a team, to thinking we could claw victory from the jaws of defeat. It was a tight start, neck and neck, my new team of vagabonds gave it everything. The chefs got complacent and on a technicality, despite being warned, were punished for only tossing a pancake 4 times on their third leg. My fifth guy sprinted and tossed like his life depended on it and a photo finish plus the technicality saw us as the winners. We were awarded the golden frying pan and were declared the 2026 champions (the golden pan bit is true,.I may have made up the champions bit).

There's a winning team photo somewhere that I'll try and get my hands on as a back up to this claim of victory!

I'm also confident that the victory was due to our teams athleticism and guile as opposed to my opening speech where via the microphone I threatened that any team not letting us win would be locked up.............