Lager'lympics: Loaded Magazine's Lost 1995 Lager World Cup, Found
Budvar won Loaded magazine's 1995 Lager'lympics, beating Molson 178–98 in the final. A 62-lager knockout tournament with six rounds and a drunk-panel scoring system, published inside What's For Tea Love? — the free food and drink supplement given away with the April 1995 edition of Loaded (bracket on pages 4–6).
For thirty years the bracket was almost impossible to find. Loaded's own online archive does not carry it — the supplement was a physical pull-out, never digitised. PINtPOINT acquired a copy from a second-hand seller in June 2026. This is the canonical reference for Loaded's Lager World Cup.
What the source actually looks like
Pages 4–6 of the supplement run as a timestamped drinking diary, not a tournament report. Fifteen scene captions track the panel through one evening: pre-match arguments at 7.05pm, a missing Tiger at 7.26pm, the first winner (Sapporo) at 8.11pm, two lagers down and Reece sick into a bin by 8.47pm, the researcher gaffer-taped to a chair at 10.02pm, the Battle of the Giants at 11.04pm, and the verdict at 11.39pm. The bracket itself only materialises in scoring tables at the end. Names that surface across the piece include Reece (introduced at 8.45pm as "the Arthur Daley of the fashion world"), the Wrap Artist, Phill (research; the one Reece gaffer-tapes to a chair at 10.02pm), Graham (editor), Mick, and Walker.
"I was dubbed 'the greatest festival of lager the world had ever seen.'"— Lager'lympics opening line, p4
The supplement at a glance
- Title
- What's For Tea Love?
- Publisher
- Loaded magazine (IPC Media)
- Issue
- Given away with Loaded Issue 12 — April 1995 (the Vic Reeves & Bob Mortimer cover, "We are Vic & Bob and we say you can't beat the meat")
- Status
- Loaded's first-ever food supplement (confirmed in James Brown's editor's letter for that issue)
- Format
- Free food and drink supplement (physical pull-out)
- Cover billing
- "for menu should know better"
- Pages
- Bracket runs across pages 4–6; STA Travel sponsor sidebar on page 7
- Other contents
- Food on film • The do's and don'ts of eating out • Boozers • The chicken stranglers (working with food) • Puddings • Sex
- Editor
- James Brown (then editing Loaded; the format runs in the magazine's signature drunk-panel voice)
The result
The final introduced a third scoring axis — drunk — alongside design and taste, because by that stage the panel was "all fuckin' around and this is really important." Budvar's victory was decisive in every column.
| Brand | Design | Taste | Drunk | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Molson | 25 | 45 | 28 | 98 |
| Budvar | 57 | 59 | 62 | 178 |
"Budweiser is your MFI of beers."— Loaded panel, 11.39pm (the Last Eight, on the way to eliminating Budweiser)
The full bracket
Six rounds, 62 lagers entering, one Budvar at the end. Swipe through the rounds below — each card shows that round's pairings with the winner highlighted. The drunk-panel captions track the descent.
"Sixty-four lagers in prime condition slogging it out under the midday strip lights." Except the supplement only lists 62. Loaded couldn't count their own entrants — which is itself perfectly Loaded.— editorial intro, p4 (the maths is theirs)
The 62 entrants
Amstel · Bear · Becks · Bintang · Boags · Brahma · Breaker · Budvar · Budweiser · Carling Black Label · Carlsberg · Carlsberg Ice · Coors · Corona · DAB · Elephant · Falcon · Fosters · Fosters Ice · Gilde Pils · Gold Label · Grolsch · Heineken · Holsten Pils · Kaltenberg Pils · Kirin · Kronenbourg 1664 · Labatts · Labatts Ice · Lion · Lone Star · Lowenbrau · Lowenbrau (again, eh?) · Lowenbrau Pils · McEwan's · Michelob · Miller · Molson · Newquay Steam · Oranjeboom · Peroni · Quartz · Red Stripe · Rolling Rock · Sagres · Samuel Adams · San Miguel · Sapporo · Shanghai · Skol · Sol · Special Brew · Steinlager · Stella Dry · Super Bock · Tennent's Extra · Tennent's Gold · Tennent's Pilsner · Tooheys · VB · Wicked · XXXX (Castlemaine)
Lowenbrau appears three times: Pils (on draft, glass), the standard can, and a second can the panel themselves labelled "(again, eh?)".
"You're not gonna drink all those tonight are you?"
- Labatts Ice • Sapporo
- Bear • Sol
- Tennent's Pilsner • Molson
- Oranjeboom • Elephant
- Sagres • Fosters Ice
- Skol • Becks
- Fosters • Newquay Steam
- Corona • Michelob
- Carlsberg Ice • Gilde Pils
- Lone Star • Grolsch
- Bintang • Boags
- Labatts • Coors
- Lowenbrau Pils • Red Stripe
- Carlsberg • San Miguel
- Stella Dry • Lion
- Quartz • Steinlager
- Special Brew • Rolling Rock
- Tennent's Gold • McEwan's
- Brahma • Breaker
- Holsten Pils • Miller (both advance)
- Kirin • Heineken
- Wicked • Kaltenberg Pils
- Gold Label • Lowenbrau
- Budvar • Tooheys (both advance)
- Carling Black Label • XXXX (Castlemaine)
- Lowenbrau • VB
- Shanghai • Amstel
- Samuel Adams • Kronenbourg 1664
- Falcon • Peroni
- Super Bock • Budweiser
- Tennent's Extra • DAB (neither advanced)
"In half an hour he's going to have more beer than he can cope with."
- Sol • Sapporo
- Elephant • Molson
- Budweiser • Holsten Pils (both advance)
- Gilde Pils • Michelob
- Grolsch • Steinlager
- Kaltenberg Pils • Breaker
- Amstel • Kronenbourg 1664
- Peroni • Boags (neither advanced)
- McEwan's • Lion
- Heineken • Tooheys
- XXXX (Castlemaine) • Budvar
- VB • Fosters Ice
- Becks • Newquay Steam
- Red Stripe • Coors
- San Miguel • Rolling Rock
- Lowenbrau • Miller
"We've got to start drinking properly. We've gotta start drinking a lot more."
- Sapporo • Budweiser
- Lion • Molson
- Tooheys • Fosters Ice
- Michelob • Budvar
- Steinlager • Rolling Rock
- Breaker • Newquay Steam
- Miller • Coors
- Holsten Pils • Kronenbourg 1664
"I shouldn't be adjudicating any more I've had too much lager."
- Fosters Ice • Molson (84)
- Rolling Rock • Budvar (108)
- Newquay Steam • Kronenbourg 1664 (82)
- Budweiser • Coors (54)
QF totals (design + taste). The "sophisticated scoring system" the panel introduced because they were "too plastered to tell the difference between lagers."
"I've just come round here cos I heard there was a load of free beers."
- Kronenbourg 1664 • Molson
- Coors • Budvar
"We're all fuckin' around and this is really important."
- Molson (98) • Budvar (178)
Final scoring used three axes: design / taste / drunk. Budvar: 57 / 59 / 62. Molson: 25 / 45 / 28. "The winner is Budvar by a very long way."
← swipe →
Quarter-final scoring
| Brand | Design | Taste | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Molson | 51 | 33 | 84 |
| Kronenbourg 1664 | 47 | 35 | 82 |
| Budvar | 51 | 57 | 108 |
| Coors | 22 | 32 | 54 |
Final scoring
| Brand | Design | Taste | Drunk | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Molson | 25 | 45 | 28 | 98 |
| Budvar | 57 | 59 | 62 | 178 |
Wait — what about Steinlager and Castle and Tiger?
A common misreading. Page 7's STA Travel competition is not the tournament. It is a sponsor sidebar — "GET A LOAD OF THIS! Travel round the world or get pissed for a year. FREE ALCOHOL!!! FREE TRAVEL!!!" — promoting a world-map graphic of sponsoring beers in associated destinations:
The travel-comp brands (Lapin Kulta Export, Dos Equis, Siglo Wine, Castle, Steinlager, Tiger) are not in the Lager'lympics bracket. They are advertorial associations supplied by the sponsor for the prize geography. The editorial tournament is the 62-lager bracket on pages 4–6; the travel sidebar promotes a multiple-choice reader competition with prizes from STA Travel, STA Travel, and "a year's supply of alcohol".
Provenance
This page exists because PINtPOINT's editorial team lost weeks hunting for the Lager'lympics in May–June 2026, OCR-sweeping every Loaded issue from 1994 to 2002 (17,858 pages at 150 DPI) and finding nothing — the supplement was bound separately from the main magazine and was never digitised in the online archive. The Issue 100 retrospective from 2002 confirmed Budvar had won "some" Loaded Lager World Cup, but the bracket itself stayed missing.
As of publication, Loaded's own online archive does not carry this supplement, and no other digital source of the Lager'lympics bracket appears to exist. If one surfaces, we will link it. (The archive does carry the host magazine — Loaded Issue 12 itself — but the bundled supplement was a physical pull-out and was never digitised alongside it.)
Confirmation that the supplement exists at all — and that it landed with this specific issue — comes from inside the host magazine itself. James Brown signed off his editor's letter for Issue 12 by naming it:
"We give you another mag packed with the sort of things most 'nice' people look down upon. As well as loads of grand fun we've also served up 'What's For Tea Love?' — our first food supplement. For those of you who are confused by the term, food is like solid alcohol only drier."— James Brown, editor's letter, Loaded Issue 12, April 1995
Why this matters now
Thirty years after the Lager'lympics, the format is enjoying a second life. PINtPOINT runs an editorial tournament called the Beer World Cup XI across the World Cup 2026 window — 48 nations, real fixtures, drunk-panel-adjacent authority devices — loosely inspired by the Lager'lympics format. There are differences: the BWC mirrors the real football schedule, includes all beer formats not just lager, and runs Pub VAR rulings. But the lineage is direct. The 1995 Lager'lympics is the format's grandfather.
Cask ale's case in particular sits in Before Kick-Off: Why English Cask Has the Advantage — a separate companion piece arguing that hand-pulled bitter is the format the rest of the world can't quite copy. The Lager'lympics by design excluded that whole conversation. It was a lager tournament, not a beer tournament.
FAQ
What was the Lager'lympics?
A knockout tournament of 62 lagers run by Loaded magazine in April 1995, published in their What's For Tea Love? food and drink supplement (given away with that month's issue). Six rounds: first round (62 → 32), second round (32 → 16), third round (16 → 8), last eight / quarter-finals (8 → 4), semi-finals (4 → 2), final. A panel adjudicated each round, getting progressively more drunk as the rounds progressed. Budvar won.
Who won Loaded's Lager World Cup?
Budvar (Budweiser Budvar, from České Budějovice in the Czech Republic), beating Molson 178–98 in the final. Final scoring used three categories: design, taste, and drunk.
What supplement was the Lager'lympics in?
The What's For Tea Love? food and drink supplement given away free with Loaded Issue 12, April 1995 (the Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer cover). It was the magazine's first-ever food supplement, confirmed in editor James Brown's letter for that issue. The bracket runs across pages 4–6 of the supplement.
Is the Lager'lympics in Loaded's online archive?
No. Loaded's own online archive does not carry the What's For Tea Love? supplement — supplements were physical pull-outs distributed inside specific issues and were never digitised. PINtPOINT obtained a physical copy from a second-hand seller in June 2026 to scan the pages on this page.
Wasn't the Lager'lympics actually a travel competition?
No — that's a misreading of the layout. Page 7 carries a separate STA Travel competition sidebar featuring Lapin Kulta Export, Dos Equis, Siglo Wine, Castle, Steinlager and Tiger. The actual Lager'lympics is the editorial bracket on pages 4–6. The travel comp is the sponsor block, not the tournament.
Who were the panel?
Names that surface across the piece include Reece (introduced at 8.45pm as "the Arthur Daley of the fashion world"), the Wrap Artist, Phill (research; the one Reece gaffer-tapes to a chair at 10.02pm), Graham (editor), Mick, and Walker. The format is the standard mid-1990s Loaded drunk-panel adjudication, with photographs showing the judges getting visibly more wasted as the rounds progress.
Sources
- What's For Tea Love? — Loaded magazine food and drink supplement, given away with Loaded Issue 12 (April 1995). Physical copy held by PINtPOINT editorial; the bracket on this page is transcribed from pages 4–6 of that supplement.
- James Brown, editor's letter, Loaded Issue 12 (April 1995), page 3 — names the supplement by title and describes it as the magazine's "first food supplement". Used here to confirm both the supplement's identity and its host issue.
- Loaded magazine Issue 100 (2002) — "The World Cup of World Cups" retrospective, page 118. Confirmed Budvar as winner of "Best Lager" in a Loaded historical tournament.
- Wikipedia: Loaded (magazine); Budweiser Budvar Brewery; James Brown (editor).