Anne Woods (gurner)
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Anne Woods (5 December 1947 – 29 March 2015) was a British
gurn A gurn or chuck is a distorted facial expression and a verb to describe the action. A typical gurn involves projecting the lower jaw as far forward and up as possible and covering the upper lip with the lower lip. The English Dialect Dictionar ...
er who won the women's world championship 28 times. Her world record was ratified by the ''
Guinness Book of Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, listi ...
'' in November 2010, after a protracted effort to have it recognised.Williamson, Marcus (3 April 2015). Known as "the world's ugliest woman", she was proud of that title, according to former Copeland council leader Elaine Woodburn. Woods regularly performed her four-minute gurning routine to her signature track, "
You're Gorgeous "You're Gorgeous" is a song by British musical project Babybird, released as a commercial single by The Echo Label on 30 September 1996. Babybird member Stephen Jones wrote the song and co-produced it with Steve Power. It was their only top-10 hi ...
" by
Babybird Babybird are an English rock band formed by songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Stephen Jones, who has been releasing music since 1995. While Jones' early solo work was released under the "Baby Bird" name, the altered "Babybird" was first use ...
. Woods first started gurning in 1977, when her sons entered her into the competition at the Egremont Crab Fair as a joke. Her first victory came as a surprise to both Anne and her husband Alex, who started gurning himself more than 20 years later. Since her debut, she missed only one competition when she was pregnant with her daughter. Woods became a local community favourite, and as her subsequent successes were covered by the media, she was credited with putting Egremont "on the map". In his 2004 book ''True Brits'', journalist J. R. Daeschner described Woods as a "diminutive, grey-headed granny" whose face normally had "a certain sweetness etched with the wrinkles from a lifetime of smoking", but that when she gurned, she transformed herself into "a crater-faced hag". The book ''Fantastic Feats and Ridiculous Records'' suggested that Woods' success "could well be attributed to her being able to remove her dentures, making her wrinkled face as ugly as a squashed prune". Daeschner noted that Alex Woods was also able to remove his dentures, with the added advantage of having a broken nose. In September 2002, Anne Woods suffered a shock defeat, coming in second place to television presenter
Michaela Strachan Michaela Evelyn Ann Strachan (, born 7 April 1966) is an English television presenter and singer. After beginning her career in theatre, she ventured into presenting and fronted the children's television shows '' Wide Awake Club'' (1986–1989 ...
, who gurned cross-eyed. Her rare defeats included a one-off loss to Pauline Hoyle, a local rival who shouted "It's a fix!" each year when Woods won. In September 2010, Woods collapsed at the Egremont Crab Fair and had to be taken to hospital after claiming her title. She died in 2015 at age 67.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woods, Anne 1947 births 2015 deaths Contortionists People from Egremont, Cumbria World record holders