Is this too much for Britain to swallow?

The lesser ones come first. There’s Justin Mih, a 29-year-old molecular biology student from Harvard. “From his earliest days he had one big dream,” the MC announces. “He always wanted to be on stage alongside the greatest eaters of his age.”

There’s Seaver “The Achiever” Miller, a 28-year-old fireman from Virginia — “he comes here today after saving women, children and kittens from burning homes”. There is Rich “The Locust” Le Fevre, at 62 the grandfather of the competitive eating circuit but still the world Spam-eating champion, having once consumed 6lb of the stuff in 12 minutes flat. He recently set another record by swallowing 247 pickled jalapeno peppers in just eight minutes.

And here come the bigger guns — “Crazy Legs” Conti, a dreadlocked New York window cleaner whom the MC dubs the “Evil Knievel of the alimentary canal”; Pat “Deep Dish” Bertoletti, 21 and mohawked, who ranks fourth in the world at competitive eating; and Sonya Thomas — 39 and thin as a toothpick — who ranks third. She is a South Korean immigrant called “ The Black Widow” after the spider that eliminates males. She has downed 65 hard-boiled eggs in six minutes, 11lb of cheesecake in nine minutes and 46 dozen oysters in ten minutes.

But there are two out-and-out front-runners this afternoon. One is Joey Chestnut, a 22-year-old engineering student from California and the great American hope. The other is Takeru Kobayashi, a baby-faced wisp from Japan who, at 27, has already established himself as the Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan of competitive eating. The “Human Tsunami” has won the July 4 Nathan’s hot dog eating championship in Coney Island, New York — the sport’s equivalent of Wimbledon or the World Cup final — six years running, and once devoured 57 cow brains in 15 minutes.

“Is he a man, or is he a demigod?”, the MC asks in awed tones. “He’s a warrior born to battle. He’s a boy king. He is the greatest athlete of all time . . .” The 13 finalists, winnowed down from the thousands who entered qualifying contests in eight cities, make their way to the stage where the MC explains the rules: the contestants have eight minutes to eat as many burgers — replete with buns, onions and mustard — as they can. The burgers may be dunked in liquid to make them slip down more easily, but for no more than five seconds. Vomiting means automatic disqualification.

This is the rematch that the world of competitive eating has long been awaiting. Last year Chestnut led until Kobayashi swept past him in the final minute to set a new world record of 69 burgers. It is, as the MC tells us, “the clash of the Titans” with a $30,000 purse.

The contestants or “gurgitators” line up behind a long table, each with a row of outsized plastic cups. Employees of Krystal, a southern fast-food chain sponsoring the event, bring on trays of hamburgers, each in a small box. Beauties with score cards take their places behind the contestants, judges in front. The MC starts the countdown — “Ten, nine, eight . . .” Suddenly they are off, a frenzied blur of flying hands and gaping mouths and bobbing heads. It’s best not to be within the spray zone . . .

On the face of it, competitive eating is America at its most decadent. It glorifies gluttony in a land where two thirds of adults are already obese or overweight. It carries the country’s culture of excess, commercialism and empty celebrity to absurd lengths. It is grist to the mill of those who dismiss Americans as fat, crass and puerile, and — surely — the antithesis of true sport.

Competitive eating certainly does not promote good health. It demands no athletic prowess. It turns ordinary folk into the human equivalents of foie gras geese in return for brief moments in the limelight.

And now it is coming to Britain. The first official contest will take place at Wookey Hole Caverns in Somerset tomorrow, with Sonya Thomas taking on 11 other contestants in a mince pie eating contest sponsored, appropriately, by the former circus owner Gerry Cottle. The winner will take home £1,000.

But there is another way of viewing competititive eating, which is as a bit of self-mockery, a joke at America’s own expense, almost a parody of that country’s mainstream sports with all their pomposity, self-importance and overpaid superstars. That is more or less how it began. It is a “sport” invented not by its participants, but by a couple of public relations men with a keen sense of humour and an eye for the main chance.

The Nathan’s hot dog eating contest was dreamed up in the early 1970s by Max Rosey, a New York publicist famous for stunts such as putting an elephant on water-skis. In a low-key way it worked. For a minimal outlay the event garnered dollops of local publicity for Coney Island each summer.

Rosey died in 1990, by which time a young employee of his named George Shea, an English graduate from Colombia University, had taken over the Nathan’s account. In 1997 Shea and his brother Rich set up their own PR firm and took Nathan’s with them. With the help of Gersh Kuntzman, a reporter on the New York Post who began writing about the contest in mock-epic terms, they turned it into a huge event attracting national and international media.

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Other food outlets began asking the Sheas to run eating contests, and in 2000 the brothers set up the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE) whose seriousness can be measured by its remit (“The governing body of all stomach-centric sports”), its motto (“In Voro Veritas” — In Gorging Truth), and its crest (two winged lions eating opposite ends of a hot dog above crossed tubes of mustard and ketchup).

The whole enterprise would have remained essentially a joke had it not been for one unforeseen development: the contestants began to take it seriously. The original fat men were replaced by a younger generation of lean, fresh-faced “gurgitators” determined not just to compete, but to win. The joke, says George Shea, “became a self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Nowadays you suggest at your peril that eating is not a sport. It is fiercely competitive, the eaters retort. It requires an extraordinary physical ability and mental toughness, they argue. It also requires rigorous training and meticulous preparation.

The “athletes” experiment with different liquids — iced tea, club soda, lemonade — to find the best lubricator. But above all, they strive to increase the size and elasticity of their stomachs by regularly ingesting huge amounts of food or liquid.

Kobayashi refuses to reveal how he trains, though some believe he has managed to turn his oesophagus into a mere tube no longer hampered by the need to swallow. Some eaters are rumoured to use muscle relaxants to enhance their performance. One of the remarkable things about the eaters, though, is how trim most are. Thomas weighs barely 100lb, Kobayashi 160. None seems to suffer from health problems — yet.

The training seems to work. The amounts consumed constantly increase. Ten years ago the winner of the Nathan’s contest ate 22 hot dogs; this year Kobayashi devoured 53.

The Sheas — smart, articulate men of 42 and 38 — find themselves sitting on a winning formula: tumbling records, compelling personalities and light-hearted pageantry.

George Shea says the IFOCE now has 6,000 eaters on its books and the stars — Shea’s “four horsemen of the oesophagus” — are virtually professionals. But more than the money, competitive eating offers the chance of celebrity.

The best get free flights, hotels, appearance fees. They are asked for autographs. “Recognition is the driving force of human motivation — greater than any other,” said Shea.

The eaters openly acknowledge that. “I love recognition. You can’t beat it,” says Seaver Miller. “It makes me feel special,” says Sonya Thomas. They seem untroubled by the questionable worth of their chosen pursuit. “So long as I’m pushing myself to succeed there’s something noble in that,” said Tim Janus, a Wall Street day trader and another top eater. “You don’t have to save mankind.” S hea jokes — at least I think he’s joking — about making eating an Olympic sport. Summer or winter, I ask? He shrugs. “It could be ice cream in summer or beef wellington in winter,” he replies.

In the Chattanooga pavilion a furious contest is developing. Along the debris-strewn stage burgers are vanishing at an astonishing rate. One-handed, two-handed, the contestants are propelling them into gaping gullets at a frantic pace. They are dunking, dribbling, dripping, spluttering and slurping.

After two minutes Kobayashi has devoured 23 burgers and Chestnut 22. After four minutes the totals stand at 60 and 56, and it is obvious that last year’s record of 69 will be shattered. The MC — none other than George Shea — is beside himself with excitement. The crowd roars the eaters on.

Some look pale and cover their mouths, but not the leaders. With three minutes left Kobayashi breaks the record. “They said it couldn’t be done,” Shea screams into his microphone. But Chestnut is hanging on. “Joey! Joey!,” the crowd chants.

There are only two people left in the race now, but even they are slowing. They shimmy and dance to shake the food down. They force the burgers past their epiglotti. You are sure they will vomit but the numbers keep flashing upwards — 75, 80, 85. One minute left. Koyabashi leads by three. It is a repulsive, riveting, astounding spectacle. You wonder how they can possibly keep going, but they do — burger after burger — each one a triumph of mind over rebellious body, each acclaimed by the rapt throng.

Finally, the buzzer sounds. Chestnut has eaten 91 burgers — 21 more than last year’s record. But Kobayashi’s total stands at 97. That is just over 12 a minute, or one every five seconds. “Awesome,” mutters a man next to me. “Unbelievable,” says another. “Physical poetry,” Shea suggests. It is, by any measure, a staggering feat.

The victor punches the air and high-fives his rivals. “I’m so happy,” he tells the crowd through his interpreter. He lifts his shirt to reveal a grotesquely distended stomach.

Will Britain, Europe’s fattest nation, find this latest American import appetising? Absolutely, Shea insists. “You are the country that will most appreciate what we are doing. You are going to get the joke.” Cottle agrees: “The eating issue has become such a big issue here that we feel we must make light of it and remind people of the pleasures of eating. Hopefully the British public will see the fun side of this sporting phenomenon and swallow it whole.”

PEAKS OF PIGGING

Chocolate

1lb 15 oz

Time: 7 minutes

Record holder: Patrick Bertoletti

Cow brains

57 brains (17lb 7oz)

Time: 15 minutes

Record holder: Takeru Kobayashi

Mayonnaise

Four 32oz bowls

Time: 8 minutes

Record holder: Oleg Zhornitskiy

Turkey

4lb 3oz roast meat

Time: 12 minutes

Record holder: Sonya Thomas

See www.wookey.co.uk/bigeat for information about Britain’s first IFOCE contest at Wookey Hole, Somerset, on Wednesday 29 November, 2006.