CaptainKickback wrote:There was a commercial for some soda I think, and their claim was it was a better way to get excitement in your life than "ferret legging." An alleged sport when men wear loose, baggy trousers, tied off at the ankles and then 4 live ferrets are poured in and the guy who lasts longest with the ferrets frolicking in his pants wins.
Nothing alleged about it, my friend. At first I thought it was just a gag perpetrated by Sylvester McCoy on "The Ken Campbell Roadshow". His best known act was as a stuntman character called "Sylveste McCoy" in a play entitled An Evening with Sylveste McCoy, where his stunts included putting a fork and nails up his nose and stuffing ferrets down his trousers, and setting his head on fire.
But, much to my surprise, it's real.
Ferret legging is a sport practiced in Yorkshire, England, UK. It was first brought to light by Donald Katz, in an article entitled "King of the Ferret Leggers", in the October 1987 issue of Outside magazine; the sport is illegal in some countries (e.g., Great Britain).
The sport involves putting two ferrets inside one's trousers, having first tied one's trouser cuffs firmly to one's ankles, lest the ferrets escape. The competitor then cinches his belt tightly, and the clock is started. Competitors cannot be drunk or drugged (but they are allowed to be clinically insane), nor can the ferrets be drugged. In addition, competitors cannot wear underpants beneath their trousers, and the ferrets' teeth cannot be filed or otherwise blunted. Competitors can touch the ferrets, but only from the outside of the trousers.
The record-holder at the time of Katz' article was Reg Mellor, a 72-year-old retired miner from Barnsley in Yorkshire. Mellor's winning time was five hours and twenty-six minutes of "keepin' 'em down." He did this on July 5, 1981 at the Annual Pennine Show at Holmfirth, Yorkshire. It was Mellor who instituted the practice of wearing white trousers in ferret-legging matches "to better show the blood."