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Q Member Great Pie Championship

Small pork pie champion at the 29th annual Great Yorkshire Pork Pie, Sausage & Products Competition staged in the Yorkshire Event Centre at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate. (Sunday, Oct 8)

Reserve supreme pork pie champion with its champion small pork pie was Q Guild member, Dales Traditional Butchers, from Kirkby Lonsdale in Cumbria. The Market Street shop is run by master butcher Mark Duckworth, who took over a long-established traditional butchers shop in the South Lakeland town in 1999 and has since developed and diversified the business beyond recognition.
 
Representing the shop on competition day was young up-and-coming butcher, 23-year-old Ira Collier, who has worked at Dales Traditional Butchers for the past six years and has already made a major impact in his chosen profession, last year being chosen as champion Young Sausage Maker in a leading meat trades national product evaluation contest.
 
`It`s our everyday pie, one made to our own recipe that continues to be a real favourite with customers,` said Ira, who returned home with multiple awards after finishing third in four other competition classes – speciality cold eating pie, thin pork sausage, speciality sausage and beef burger.
 
As reserve supreme pork pie champion, Ira received the Willis Hall Cup for Pork Pie Excellence, presented by Valerie Hall, whose late husband, the renowned Leeds-born Yorkshire playwright, was a great fan of the Great Yorkshire Competition and acted as a judge on several occasions.
 
Mr Duckworth said: `Ira has worked for us since the age of 16. He loves his job and is a great all-rounder, a real credit to the business. We were at a family celebration on the day of the competition, so I just left him to it. We`re really chuffed for him. It`s really good for the shop too."