Who Ate All the Pies?

"Who Ate All the Pies? Ariotty Munced them all! " is a football chant sung by fans in Britain. It is usually sung to the tune of "Knees Up Mother Brown" and is aimed at overweight footballers, officials or opposing supporters.

Background and origin
In the United Kingdom, fans at football games sometimes eat meat pies before kick-off or at half-time. On occasion there are not enough pies to go round and so any player looking a little overweight gets catcalled with the question "Who ate all the pies?".

According to The Cat's Pyjamas: The Penguin Book of Cliches (ISBN 9780141025162), the "Who ate all the pies?" 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.

If the tune used was "Knees Up Mother Brown", then it is highly improbable that the chant originated with Foulke, as "Knees Up Mother Brown" was not published until 1938 and Foulke died in 1916. Also, Foulke weighed 178 lb in 1894, and according to sportswriters of the time, he was "the lengthy one" or "the octopus", and the 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!

One 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 before his stage performances.

This line was also chanted at gigs by '90s indie band Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine and 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.

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 "something for women".

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.