THE appearance of Maldon’s world famous Mud Race on a primetime TV show has sparked a debate on how the race began.

TV star Robson Green got stuck in the mud when he was filmed completing the iconic race for Tales from the Coast.

The show, filmed in April last year, was shown last Tuesday on ITV in the final episode in the four-part series.

But the origins of the race, which dates back 1973, have become a top- ic of debate after questions over the show’s version of events.

In the show’s opening Robson said: “43 years ago a local man challenged the landlord of the Queen’s Head pub to run across the river and serve a meal on the muddy saltings on the other side.

“The challenge was accepted.”

But Chris Cumbers, 59, of Great Totham, said the suggestion was “pure fiction”.

He said his friends Dave and Terry had been drinking at the Queen’s Head pub on Hythe Quay when they decided they wanted something to eat.

He said: “The pub only provided crisps, plain only, and nuts and some dodgy homemade pickled eggs and yawning rolls so the brothers ordered a meal to be brought down from the Blue Boar.

“When the meal arrived the broth- ers were sitting at a table in the mud and asked for the meal to be served to them there. 

“The Blue Boar waiter declined so Terry, with tea towel over his arm, served the meal to his brother Dave.”

Historian Stephen Nunn said he understood the race started after one of the pub regulars had been dared to serve a meal on the mud bank.

He said: “It wasn’t all that long ago that one of the regulars bravely accepted a challenge — perhaps we should say dare — to serve a meal on the riverbank opposite. Dressed in tuxedo, he duly obliged and the incen - tive for him and his dinner guests to wade over to the party was, yet more beer — a barrel of it in fact.”

It resulted in a bar being opened on the saltings the following year.

About 20 people made a mad dash across the driver bed, drank a pint of beer and dashed back, beginning the iconic race.

So many people took part in the event in subsequent years that the drinking of beer was discontinued and the race became just a run across the riverbed and back again.

Chairman of the race Brian Farrington admitted there was some “poetic licence” from the producers.

But he said: “I don’t think Robson Green was far away. It was a bet between the publican and a few of the regulars for a pint of beer.”

The Mud Race took place every year from the rear of the Queen’s Head public house until 1989.

In 2011 the race moved from its traditional end of December date to normally the last weekend of April, although this year’s event is on May 7.