VICAR DROWNS IN BAKED BEANS
VILLAGERS have been left stunned after their vicar, the Rev Duncan Harris, drowned in a bath of baked beans when a charity stunt went tragically wrong…
A VILLAGE is in mourning after its vicar drowned in a bath of baked beans when a charity stunt during their summer fete went wrong.
Cops say the Rev Duncan Harris, 58, slipped as he tried to get out of the bath for a “comfort break” and fell back in, knocking himself unconscious before sliding beneath the beans.
They also said he had been drinking before taking on the challenge.
Villagers at St Thomas’s annual fair and jamboree in the hamlet of Greenbury Padgett, Bucks, had temporarily left the tent for the big prize draw being held on the village green, leaving the vicar alone in the main marquee.
He had pledged to stay in the beans for the duration of the fete to raise cash for the local hospice, of which he was patron.
Lifeless
But when the public returned to the tent they thought Rev Harris had ended his challenge and gone back to the vicarage next door to “clean up”, not realising the cleric’s lifeless body was still in the bath of beans.
Fete organiser Gwen Brown, 76, told Sunday Sport: “It was two hours before we got round to clearing the tent and when the bath of beans was taken outside to be emptied, out flopped poor Duncan’s body.
“It was such a terrible shock. To think he had been lying dead there all that time, while we made merry around him. The whole village is in mourning.”
It later emerged that the minister had an unusually high amount of alcohol in his blood, indicating that he had probably drunk the equivalent of a bottle and a half of whisky before taking on the charity challenge.
A police spokesman said: “Being intoxicated, he would have been unable to react quickly enough when he fell and hit his head.”