Food-lovers take on Portsmouth's 'spiciest pizza' in Man v Food challenge

At the Guildhall Village restaurant in Guildhall Walk, heroic challengers were invited to take on the Scorpion Challenge – a pizza that left mouths burning and heads splitting.

The 10in pizza is topped with Habenero Tabasco spiked pizza sauce, chilli pepper cheddar, jalapeños, diced red chilli, Chipotle Tabasco slavered chicken and Scorpion Tabasco, which weighs in at 50,000 Scoville units.

Challengers were given 10 minutes to eat the pizza.

Andrew MacFarlane, 39, was one of those who attempted the Scorpion Challenge, but was only able to stomach a couple of slices.

He said: ‘Once I’d eaten a couple of slices I stopped for a moment, and that’s when the pain really hit me.

‘I think challenges like this are all about your own personal tolerance to the pain – everyone who tries it is going through the exact same thing but copes with it differently.

‘The spice came as a real shock, it hits you pretty bad and even a while after I had finished, the pain didn’t go away.

Staff at the Guildhall Village went through a number of prototypes before arriving at the final dish, which they claim is the 'spiciest pizza in Portsmouth’.

For the final pizza, they doubled down on the amount of spice to really put people through their paces.

Staff member Daniel Keen said: ‘I really felt for the people who had a go at this pizza, because you could see just how much they were suffering.

‘We were testing it earlier in the day and had a few variations – we decided that we had to double the amount of Scorpion Tabasco and red chilli to really give it a powerful kick.

‘I had one slice and that pretty much finished me off – I don’t think I could have done it myself.’

Scorpion Tabasco is currently not available in the UK, but the brand says it will be sold here in the future.

The Guildhall Village says other food challenges in the future are ‘almost inevitable’.