Conkers scandal is a reminder of bonkers worlds everywhere we look

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is an author of fiction, cookery books and poetry anthologies. Her latest book is ‘The Dinner Table’, a collection of food writing

Hold the phone, TV commissioners: I have a truly irresistible drama for you. An autumn village, middle England. Dappled light. Fallen leaves. Conkers — and the people in the world who care most about conkers. For this is the World Conker Championships. 

Among them, King Conker himself. Top judge, men’s finalist, he is clad in a gold-lined forest-green cape-coat heavily adorned with wizened conkers of years gone by. He sports, also, a kind of mayoral chain of more conkers. 

King Conker — known, in civilian life, as David — is 82 years old. He is the man who prepares the conkers before the event; he selects them for competition, drills the holes, affixes the strings. But he, himself, has never won. This may be his last chance.

At stake is the tea towel of victory, plus a commemorative WCC coaster. Plus, of course, glory. But how far would King Conker go to get it? And is that a . . . home-wrought steel conker, painted impeccably trompe-l’oeil style and threaded on an identical shoelace to the competition shoelaces in his pocket? And would he . . . use it? 

Listen: this story has everything. Not just the steel conker, or the conker costumes. There’s the young upstart: a woman but also . . . American! There’s centuries of obscure, folklore-inflected tradition. There’s the age-old tale of one last job. And riding on all this? A man’s honour — or another man’s hard-earned victory tea towel. It’s Midsomer Murders without a single murder.  

“I was found with the steel conker in my pocket,” King Conker explained, afterwards. “But I only carry [it] around with me for humour value.”

This is, needless to say, not the view of King Conker’s defeated opponent. “My conker disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen,” he told The Telegraph. “I’m suspicious.”

The WCC are anxious to point out the many safeguards in place including a pre-selected sack, watched over by officers. “Members of the committee have . . . concluded that, as far as we can tell, play was fair, and the rules were followed,” St John Burkett, WCC spokesperson, told MailOnline. The young American woman, Kelci Banschbach, was the competition’s overall winner. But that’s not the point.

The point — and why this story is so compelling — is that it makes the invisible visible. Everywhere you look, there are universes overlapping with yours of which you know nothing at all. People have their small private domains — villages, societies, group chats — and those domains have lore. There are novels in these worlds! There are dramas and comedies and tragedies with surprising consequences. For almost everyone, conkers is a children’s game; for King Conker, the stakes could not be higher: not just a tea towel, after all, but a whole community. Did he, after a lifetime of service, betray his friends? 

I still think with fondness of a notice I once saw on a bowling green pinboard, heavily amended in biro: “Do NOT call Ron about membership! Ron is NO LONGER responsible for assigning memberships and his recommendations will NOT be followed. Thank you.” Ron’s number had been assiduously removed. Poor Ron. Or perhaps, naughty Ron. Who can say? Not me, which was why I loved it so much. It was an unsolvable little mystery; a small and needful reminder that, whatever is going on with you, other things are also always going on. 

There are whole worlds of intrigue and pain and glory all around us. There is suffering and bad behaviour and commemorative tea towels! People are small and lovely and bad; and just like you, and unlike you; and your private trials and triumphs are but one in eight billion.

You are, I suppose, not alone in the universe. Which is a pretty substantial return, moral-wise, from a single steel conker on a sunny Sunday, no? Commissioners: you heard it here first.