Kettering butchers take on stomach-turning Surströmming fermented fish challenge

A pair of Kettering butchers have taken on a man versus fish challenge by eating one of the world’s most foul-smelling foods.

Surströmming is made from Baltic sea herring, fermented in brine for at least six months before being canned.

Jamie Cooper and colleague Billyjoe Frazer dared one another to eat the stinking delicacy to launch a series of charity food fundraisers.

Yesterday (Sunday) the gagging pair – cable tied together to make sure neither ran away – battled with the fishy fillets as onlookers reeled back in disgust.

Jamie said: “It’s the worst thing I’ve eaten and I’ve eaten brains, eyeballs, raw live animals. Growing up in a butcher’s shop I got made to eat all sorts of stuff back in the day.

"We’d been watching videos for a long time of the Surströmming smelly fish challenge and the staff said ‘you really should do it’.”

As well as sick buckets a donations pot was passed around the crowd watching the stunt in Gold Street outside Jamie’s Quality Butchers.

The pair, barriered off from the gathered crowd, were sprayed by fermented fish juice as pressure from the tin can was released alongside the pungent odour.

Plunging their forks into the fillets, struggling not to gag, the men did manage to eat some of the briny Northern Swedish delicacy – which costs nearly £40 a can.

A nearly-vomiting Jamie said: “I’ve paid for it so I’m going to eat it.”

Billyjoe said: “I’ve never tasted the bottom of a dustbin before but it was like that’s what it resembled, like a really smelly bin. We’ve all had a smelly bin before.”

The pair want to raise money for the community with more challenges.

Jamie said: “Imagine licking the bottom of your bin in the summer time with maggots in it, but worse, that’s the only way to describe it.

”We’re hoping that it will lead to doing more challenges to raise funds for the community. We would like people to nominate food challenges, the worst things. We’d do anything. I’ll eat dog s*** if it raises money for charity, I’ll do anything.”