As it happens, because Fred the Red is a devil, and therefore from hell, which is hot, presumably, he is immune to the impacts the prolonged exposure to Boiler Man's endless heat would otherwise have. Despite being two well-matched adversaries, only one of them can come out on top. Let's do that.

A thing so hard and rigid and yet so fragile, so unreliable, ready to break down on the chilly first day of a winter month for no reason at all. Several minutes of this pass, with the once-raucous crowd previously baying for bird blood quietening to nothing more than a confused murmur. To the quarters we go. I have no idea how it worked or when it took place but here we are, down to the final 16. Quietly telling him to 'Keep walking son, you ain't seen nothing' as though this is the alley outside secondary school the Jolly Green Giant goes to smoke in. A proper old school beatdown. As he does so, he inadvertently bursts one of Boiler Man's internal pipes which - and I'm no heating engineer, if that wasn't obvious - starts leaking gas.

It smells delicious.

There are bodies. He can punch and kick and grapple all he likes, but he's not hurting a boiler. What use does a giant anthropomorphic pie have for a baseball cap that, evidently, is far too small for his big pie head? We haven't discussed that yet, or how he can see or anything, but it does, definitely, work. There's shrimp and hot water everywhere. Let alone swans that are *squints eyes* about nine foot tall and have grown up on the rough and ready streets of Swansea City. God knows how Roy Hodgson managed to qualify for the mascots royal rumble but the important thing is that he did.

Carnage. Captain Canary and Ajax in Homer's Iliad. So yeah. Shit! Which is also the boiler itself. Take, in contrast, the way Jolly Green Giant, the Yeovil Town mascot, is stalking his opposition. Say hello to Crusty the Pie. - impaled on his own gardening fork.
With his head. Bang. There is smoke. Bang. The pie is great, but it's not the pie.

It's one for the heads, this, evolving from a straightforward brawl into a real slow-burn tactical battle. How is this not better? "There he goes," one English football league mascot fan whispered to another.

Gully, clearly panicked by the appearance of a deadly weapon, drops the hat out of his mouth and attempts to fly away back to Brighton. Fucking hell. Bang. We have a winner. This about them scrapping. This one is really horrible, actually. And teeth, apparently. It's quite an ordeal to watch, to be honest, and listen to, hearing the aggressive sizzling of the shrimp's outer layer on hot boiler.