Poppadoms play an important part in National Curry Week (12-18th October) and are used in three of the major events: The World Poppadom Tower Challenge, The Speed Eating Challenge and The Poppadomathon©. The record for the National Curry Week's World Poppadom Tower Challenge is held by Tipu Rahman, from Tamarind in Northampton, who managed to stack an amazing 1,280 poppadoms, measuring 5' 8" (172.72cm). Judges included Northampton local Councillor Danielle Stone, Northampton Chronicle and Echo Editor Daniel Owens, Mitsubishi Sales Manager James Booth and Managing Director of B & H Building and Contractors Ltd Bobby Singh, who was the technical witness to the attempt.

Everyone assumes it is easy to eat a poppadom quickly and yet it would surprise many to know that the record for the number eaten in 1 minute is 3 set by Perry Hughes and his friend in 2009. The record for number eaten in 5 minutes is 15 set by Tim Stobbs in 2006, who was immediately sick afterwards.

70 customers at Aakash in Cleckheaton set a new group world record in September 2014, eating 141 poppadoms in 1 minute.

Thornbury Air Cadets smashed their own Poppadomathon© world record. Overseen by Flight Sergeant Daniel Rouse, the squadron managed to beat last year's record of 30.26 miles in 30 minutes, by collectively running 33.5 miles in 30 minutes.

Poppadom fun facts

  • Poppadoms were called 'popper-cake' in Bombay in the nineteenth century.
    The word is an abbreviation of 'paruppu-adam' (lentil cake).
  • One company in Chennai India claim to sell 2 million papads (poppadums) to Britons per day. This means their annual sales, if placed end to end, would cover the 24,859 mile circumference of the Earth 2.8 times.
  • If the number of poppadoms consumed in the UK each year were stacked on top of each other they would make a tower 156 times the height of Mount Everest, (8,848m) or over 1,560 times the height of the world's tallest building Burj Khalifa in Dubai (828m). Such a tower would go way past the International Space Station in orbit at 410km.

The Poppadomathon©, poppadum speed-eating and poppadum tower challenge are just three of the fun ways the event invites the curry loving public to celebrate the cuisine and culture in order to raise funds for the alleviation of poverty and suffering worldwide. This year, the focus is aimed particularly at water projects, to help the plight of the 1.4 million children dying from water-related diseases every year.