The World Ignorance Championships

This was originally an event that was instigated in the early 1950s by Immingham Brown.

Brown was a man who had been a particularly unsuccessful spy during the war years, and he realised that the one thing that he was good at was being ignored and ignoring things.

He set about building an International League of people ignoring things, or more frequently each other. It turned out that some people were exceptional at ignoring things for frankly incredible amounts of time.

It was mildly successful, but it went largely unnoticed by the larger populace.

It died out suddenly in the late ’60s due to most of the European nations pulling out after a dispute.

The cause of this dispute was simply that Britain had had a spectacular success in the Ignoring Championships, and it was felt by many of the European participants, that there was an exploitation of a natural home advantage going on.

They wanted to see some sort of handicap system invoked, and after many difficult meetings, it was suggested that the British Team should be forced to wear hi-viz jackets, Deeley boppers and bells on their ankles, which would certainly have made them harder to ignore.

When the British Ambassador pointed out that British people do not get any help in the Winter Olympics, he was promptly ignored.

This all went largely unreported at the time, apart from an opinion piece in The Triumph Herald, a local newspaper in Thrutchworthy, where several of the previous British hopefuls had come from.

Thrutchworthy, a conspicuously unspectacular town on the East Coast of England had excelled in breeding many ignorant people. Some could even ignore their most basic needs and desires if it seemed like too much effort.

The opinion piece, written by Gadgee Farthingnooke, said:

‘It seems such a shame that once again, the great success of our Thrutchworthy Ignoring team has gone largely unreported. It does not escape my attention that there is some level of irony in this situation, but that is scant recompense for our wonderful team of Ignorant hopefuls who will be left without a place to demonstrate their immense talents.

All for the sour grapes from the French and Germans. Is this what we won the war for?”

The article then dropped into even more jingoistic rhetoric and is also best ignored.