Satire from 'Bearded Gimp' on Magic Seaweed

Roy, I salute you. You are now beyond parody...Wooden board turns the world on its headMount Maunganui, NZToday the revolution started at the Weightwatchers World Longboarding Championships. All who witnessed it will call this day the Year Zero of surfing's new era. A re-writing of everything we thought we knew about board design no less. And its leader? The unlikely figure of an under-sized elderly hippy rocking a pink romper suit and a home-made wooden board. Welcome to the rest of your surfing life.BananaTo fully appreciate the impact we have to wind the clock back to 8 am this morning, to a time before this design tsunami hit. A time that may yet become known simply as BS (Before Stewart). Picture the scene, a group of the world's hottest young longboarders checking the heat draw and speculating about the identity of local wildcard Roy Stewart. Then picture them literally crying with laughter as our hero walks down the beach in a pink wetsuit and helmet, barely able to carry a board that's double the length of anything else on the beach, and which appears to have drawn significant design influence from the humble banana.100 metres, maybe moreTop UK ripper Ben Skinner takes up the tale, "I'd just checked the draw and seen that I had Roy in my first heat. Some of these wildcards can be well dangerous, so it's a massive understatement to say that I was hugely relieved when I first clapped eyes on Roy." But the tears of laughter quickly turned to bitter tears of pain. "It took Roy a bit of time to get that thing out back, by which point I'd caught two or three pretty good rides. One of them was really long - definitely more than 10 metres - and I'd nailed a tricky little shuffle as well. Then Roy catches his first wave. I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing. Ya know those penguins that fall over backwards in the Falklands watching the planes? That's what I was like. He just disappeared! Seriously, he must have ridden for 100 or maybe 150 metres. ON ONE WAVE!! Fark mate, and the speed he was going. It was like a pink blur."LambsOn the beach, veteran ASP judge Raimundo Herrera watched open-mouthed at the scene unfolding in front of him. "I'd just given Ben a 9.63 for his massive ride and then Roy gets his first wave. What could we do? It was the best wave I'd seen in my life - one that made our scoring system suddenly irrelevant. In the end we had to start marking him out of 100. Roy's heat total was 197.6 for his two best waves and his nearest competitor scored 16.1. It was carnage out there. Lambs to the slaughter."That performance was enough for the rest of the field. As Herrera confirms, "Pretty much straight after Roy's first ride 17 competitors withdrew with injury and the rest of them followed suit, citing a variety of reasons. Nobody came out and said it, but we all knew that Roy would simply make them look stupid. Only Phil Rajzman was prepared to put his reputation on the line so we arranged a final for the two of them. Fair play to Phil, he gave it a go but Roy absolutely roasted him. He came in with tears in his eyes. Said it was a privilege to be out there in the presence of genius."ModestThe unusually modest Mr Stewart was typically self-effacing afterwards, saying he'd only entered the contest for a laugh - and to pay off some parking fines - and that the last thing he wanted was loads of publicity or to create a design revolution. Amazingly, he revealed that for years he'd built his boards anonymously to try to focus people's attention on the design rather than himself. Well, that looks all set to change now with every surf brand worth its salt rushing to jump onto the bandwagon and the world's surf media hungry to anoint a new saviour.CopyAs every small-time shaper knows, large board-building companies are usually all too quick to steal new ideas and pass them off as their own but it appears that this time round things might be different. As one top shaper, who asked not to be identified, revealed, "Normally, yeah we 'borrow' the odd design, give it a fancy name and market it as our own concept. It works a treat to be honest, I haven't had to innovate for twenty years. But this thing of Roy's, it's uncopiable. It's phenomenally advanced and may even include alien technology. Seriously."Range deletedAnd it's not just longboarding that's been affected by the arrival of Mr Stewart's design. Almost overnight demand for shortboards in many countries has fallen off a cliff, so profound is the impact of the 17 footer. Many surf shops have simply deleted their entire range of boards - both long and short - and now offer solely a choice of different "Roys".If unconfirmed rumours coming out of Cocoa Beach, Florida are to be believed King Kelly has taken an axe to his entire quiver on seeing video of Roy's exploits and now refers to his record-breaking nine world titles as "the wasteland years". Frankly, who can blame him?Thanks RoyTo sum up, we are truly blessed to be alive in the same era as this leviathan of the waves. This giant among men. This legend. I actually think that these designs could finally bring peace to the Middle East. On a personal note, I've named my first-born after you. And she's a girl.May the Roy be with you!