Eddie 'Bozo' Miller (obituary)

[bijou]

Eddie "Bozo" Miller, who died on January 7 aged 89, was an American described by the Guinness Book of Records as the "world's greatest trencherman".

   
Though he achieved this accolade by virtue of his competitive eating stunts - such as eating 27 2lb chickens in a row to win a $10,000 bet, or out-drinking a lion in Martinis - Miller was just as keen on the table in ordinary life. "Before lunch, I'd have 10 to 12 martinis, every day," he told the Oakland Tribune last November. "In Las Vegas, I ate 12 club sandwiches in a row. I ate 400 raviolis a couple of times. I'd eat 6,000 to 12,000 oysters on a half shell. Sometimes I'd eat the entire menu." Despite these prodigious exercises in gluttony, he insisted: "I never really had indigestion."

His encounter with the lion came, like most of his exploits, as the result of a bet. "Some guy from the circus came into the restaurant - Reno Barsocchini's, I think - with a lion on a leash," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I drank them out of a glass, and they put the martinis on a soup plate for the lion. I maybe had about a dozen. The lion, he kept lapping them up until he just fell asleep."

When he could be persuaded to put his cutlery down, Miller worked in Oakland as a bar-owner and restaurateur (his bar was called Bozo's) until selling up in 1946; he also had a spell as a bookie and later operated a drinks distribution company. His primary interest, however, was racing: he began going to the track in New York in the 1930s, and quickly became a well-known figure among gamblers and journalists, largely for his eating feats, and his ability to pack away two American quarts (just under two litres) of whiskey in under an hour.

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89 years old, that will upset the health food freaks.