CENTREFOLD / Long hot sumo: Inflation rocks the city
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Your support makes all the difference.'Everyone in the City is a wimp,' roared a man wearing bright red trousers and a yellow baseball cap into a crackly microphone. The forlorn-looking businessman sitting on a bench nearby stopped eating his sandwich for a moment and stared. Things have not been going too well for MC Richard Kelly this week. You'd have thought that the sight of two giant inflatable sumo wrestlers lying on the grass in Exchange Square would have caused something of a stir. But, what with the wind and the rain, Kelly has persuaded only a handful of the passing business community to indulge in a quick lunchtime bout. Hordes turned up last year, apparently, but on Tuesday the keenest interest came from a stray Japanese tourist, and he only wanted a photo.
'It's a cross between The Generation Game and It's a Knockout,' Kelly explained as his two assistants, Gerry and Keith, hoisted the 12 ft latex warriors on to their backs. Given that the rules consist simply of throwing one's opponent off a mat in a best-of-three game, this seemed an unfair slur on the two shows. Then again, Stuart Hall would have a field day commentating on the various positions Gerry (Kendo, blue) and Keith (Tojo, red) adopted in their battle for supremacy. Yelling 'Sumo, sumo,' MC Kelly ran between the two, beating each in turn with a bamboo stick before finally dropping his trousers.
At this point a woman from administration came over and suggested that they were in danger of ruining the grass. 'Fancy a game?' Kelly asked a passing maintenance worker. 'Nah]' came the reply, 'Can't afford to stand around playing silly buggers'.
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(Photograph omitted)
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