Man who lost wallet 14 years ago hears group who found it created a drinking contest in his honour

Losing your wallet is the pits – we’ve all been there.

But very few of us have been contacted 14 years later by a man whose friend found your funds, snaffled £10 and used it to buy cider – before setting up an annual drinking competition in your honour.

This is the surprising news that has recently reached journalist Tim Burrows, whose tweet on the topic has so far received 41,000 likes and 14,000 shares.

Tim Burrows, who writes for the Guardian and Vice, shared the posts from the anonymous man, who got in touch asking if he’d once lost his wallet at Reading Festival.

The poster said that his friends found Tim’s wallet in a ditch and handed it in to lost property – “But not before one of them ‘burrowed’ a 10er out of it and bought as much White Lightning as he could find.”

He added: “Looking back on it, that was very childish and illegal but I always thought it would be nice to reach out and let you know that it went down as an annual tradition of cider drinking competitions named the Timothy Burrows Challenge”.

He said that he would “happily restore karma” by offering to pay back the £10.

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He went on to outline the rules of the drinking game, which involves three teams of five racing to down three litres of cider between them.

He added: “It’s a sprint to the end”, adding that the most recent contest ended with one team captain spending the rest of the night rolled up in a carpet.

Tim has admitted to having reservations about the huge popularity of his post, saying he feels “like a harassed PA to my drunken 19-year-old self”, musing “I knew the BBC World Service would call one day. I just didn’t think it would be about losing a wallet p*ssed out of my mind 14 years ago.”