science

Who Ate All the Pies?

Who Ate All the Pies? is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Who Ate All the Pies? rather than just read about it. In short: "Who Ate All the Pies?" is a football chant sung by fans in the UK. It is usually sung to the tune of "Knees Up Mother Brown" and is aimed at overweight footballers, officials or other supporters.

Key takeaways

Who Ate All the Pies? belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Who Ate All the Pies? to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Who Ate All the Pies? from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

"Who Ate All the Pies?" is a football chant sung by fans in the UK. It is usually sung to the tune of "Knees Up Mother Brown" and is aimed at overweight footballers, officials or other supporters.

Background and origin The chant was first sung in 1894 by Sheffield United supporters, and directed at the club's goalkeeper William "Fatty" Foulke, who weighed over 300 lb (140 kg). In his early career he played for Blackwell Colliery, subsequently playing for Sheffield United and Chelsea FC. If the tune used was Knees up Mother Brown, then it is highly improbable that the chant originated with Foulke who retired in 1907 and died in 1916; Knees up Mother Brown originated in 1918. Also, Foulke weighed 178 pounds (81 kg) in 1894. According to sportswriters of the time, he was nicknamed "the lengthy one" or "the octopus"; his weight gain came later.

The lyrics The lyrics of the chant are:

Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the pies? You fat bastard, You fat bastard, You ate all the pies! A variation replaces the second line with "The burgers and the fries."

Adoption and inspiration Part of the song (the third line – "You fat bastard") has been adopted by Roy "Chubby" Brown as his anthem and is enthusiastically chanted by the audiences during his stage performances. This line was also chanted at gigs by 1990s indie band Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine; it is also included as the intro on their album 30 Something. It was chanted at their manager Jon Fat Beast, who had a tendency to appear on stage stripped to the waist, displaying his ample abdomen. American rock band Faith No More released a live album You Fat Bastards: Live at the Brixton Academy, so named after the crowd were heard singing the chant at the band's show in April 1990. The Vegetarian Society have used a variant of this, "Who ate all the peas?", as a slogan. They displayed it on promotional hoardings in football grounds as part of their "Men and Meat Campaign", intended to combat the idea that vegetarianism is unmanly. The chant has been associated with the striker Micky Quinn, who played for six football clubs in the 1980s and 1990s. He was particularly identified with the chant following an incident in a match between Quinn's then club Newcastle United and Grimsby Town in March 1992, in which a fan threw a pie onto the pitch which Quinn promptly picked up and ate. The chant even formed the title for Quinn's autobiography, which was published in 2003. During cricket matches, the chant is known to have been directed at players such as Shane Warne, by spectators belonging to the Barmy Army.

Wayne Shaw controversy In a February 2017 incident dubbed "Piegate", 23-stone Sutton United goalkeeper Wayne Shaw was fined and suspended by the FA for breaching gambling laws, after he ate a pie during a match and then admitted he saw there were odds of 8/1 on him doing so and tipped off his friends.

References

Illustrations

Who Ate All the Pies?: William "Fatty" Foulke, in whose honour the chant may have originated — William "Fatty" Foulke, in whose honour the chant may have originated

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Who Ate All the Pies?

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Who Ate All the Pies? claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Who Ate All the Pies? before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Who Ate All the Pies? ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Who Ate All the Pies?

In research: Who Ate All the Pies? appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Who Ate All the Pies? in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Who Ate All the Pies? is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Association football songs and chants, Culture of England, Works about obesity, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Who Ate All the Pies? outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Who Ate All the Pies? in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Who Ate All the Pies? means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Who Ate All the Pies? out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Who Ate All the Pies? in simple terms?

"Who Ate All the Pies?" is a football chant sung by fans in the UK. It is usually sung to the tune of "Knees Up Mother Brown" and is aimed at overweight footballers, officials or other supporters.

Why does Who Ate All the Pies? matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Who Ate All the Pies??

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Who Ate All the Pies?.