The cheese-rolling hoax that ran for decades

sir – You report (January 23) that the annual cheese-rolling contest at Stilton has been cancelled. This marks the end of what began as a newspaper hoax.

While Stilton got its name from being sold at the coaching inn at the Huntingdonshire village of Stilton, it has always been made in Melton Mowbray. An 18th-century Stilton inn landlord visiting his girlfriend there would bring back cheese.

In 1963 an enterprising freelance journalist based in nearby Peterborough was asked by a newspaper to provide details of any Easter customs in his locality. An occasional drinker at that same Stilton inn, he persuaded the landlord of the time to “reinvent” the ancient custom of cheese-rolling.

It was a quiet Easter and, as a national newspaper staff reporter for East Anglia at the time, I wrote a slightly tongue-in-cheek report of the event, as did other Cambridge-based colleagues. Thus are legends born.

Malcolm Stuart

Bath, Somerset

Say cheese: contestants assemble at the starting line for Stilton’s bank holiday event