The Westminster Greaze, a scramble to secure the largest piece of pancake tossed over an iron bar, has returned for the first time since 2020 with a girls’ event now running alongside the boys’ competition.

Taking place up School, as is tradition, this year’s winners were Remove pupil Sam, representing Milne’s, who emerged with nearly the full pancake still intact and Remove pupil Chelsea, representing Liddell’s.

Sam said: “I am really happy to have won it. It was crazy everyone fighting for it, but I came out the winner!”

Chelsea said: “It was really fun. It was a really great Westminster experience; definitely something I am going to remember.”

The Greaze is an annual custom unique to Westminster School, held each Shrove Tuesday since at least the mid 1700s but in a tradition likely to be medieval. A school cook tosses a pancake over an iron bar and pupils scramble to retrieve what they can of the pancake. The pupil with the largest piece wins a guinea from the Dean of Westminster, who also grants the whole school an extra day’s holiday  — the ‘Dean’s play’.

The Greaze is the most anticipated event in the School diary and is a popular spectator event, notably in 1919 when it was attended by King George V and Queen Mary, alongside their sons, the future Edward VIII and George VI.