Joint joy as meat madness returns during first Christmas market since pandemic | UK News

A London tradition in the lead-up to Christmas has returned for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic closed the UK down.

Vegans, avert your eyes now.

The Smithfield Market has held its pre-Christmas meat auction for the first time since 2019 – where sellers auction off surplus meat which hadn’t been sold during the festive period.

A market has existed on the site for more than 800 years – and the present market in Charterhouse Street was established by the 1860 Metropolitan Meat and Poultry Market Act.

After a three-year pause due to the pandemic, the market has returned and hundreds of people crowded the market to buy the centrepieces for their Christmas dinner.

Bidders clutched cash in their hands to try and get the attention of auctioneers as they bought up the cut-price joints.

The crowds cheered as huge cuts of meat were sold for bargain prices – and occasionally sellers would offer joints on the toss of a coin, where winners would get the meat for free.

Greg Lawrence, a meat wholesaler who’s worked at the auction for 50 years, told the BBC: ‘Everyone is a bit excited. This starts our Christmas and I know for a lot of people who attend the auction, it starts their Christmas too.

‘It’s a lot of fun as well.’

It’s a bizarre spectacle, with huge cuts of meat from entire turkeys to suckling pigs being passed overhead like crowd surfers at a metal concert.

The event is an institution to locals, who often return year after year to buy a turkey and other meat at bargain prices and start to clear space in their freezers weeks or months in advance to make space.

But it’s over almost as soon as it begins, and the crowds quickly dispersed as the huge volumes of meat sold out within 90 minutes.

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