an update from the World Beard and Moustache Championship

From the Vancouver Sun:

Some of the most stylish fuzzy faces from across the globe gathered in Britain on Saturday to do battle over their beards. The World Beard and Moustache Championships 2007 saw a wealth of the planet's most bizarre facial hairstyles congregating in Brighton on the southern English coast. Some 250 competitors from Britain, Germany, the United States and many other countries were on parade on the seafront for the biennial event.

"Everybody has got a smile on their faces. It's a whole day of seeing amazing facial hair," said organiser Steve Parsons of London-based group The Handlebar Club.

Categories of moustache included: Natural, English, Dali, Imperial, Hungarian and Freestyle. Partial Beard categories were Natural Goatee, Chinese, Musketeer, Imperial, Freestyle and Sideburns Freestyle. For full beards, competitors battled it out in the Verdi, Garibaldi, Natural Full, Natural Full with Styled Moustache and Freestyle categories.

That has to be the paragraph of the week. Garibaldi? Sideburns Freestyle? Hilarious!
And I wasn't there, but I think I would have agreed with the following sentiment:

"The freestyle beard is probably the most spectacular one because basically, as the name suggests, it's freestyle, so you can do anything you like," Parsons said, according to the BBC.

"For example, at the last championships in Berlin, one of the competitors there actually styled his beard in the shape of the Brandenburg Gate with horses and flags and everything."

This time round, one man waxed his into the shape of Brighton Pier.

The next championships take place in Anchorage, Alaska, in 2009.

That's good news for those who need some time to prepare for the next contest. That's plenty of time for me to get my Rollie Fingers mustache going again or perhaps a reprise of the facial hair that three of us (including Phil Trostel and Mike "Bandolier" Ellis) grew on our trip to California in the summer of 1991.