The competition, first held in Bradford 1992, is an annual affair where ``chicken vindaloo'' clashes with ``prawn do piaza'' and ``pilau rice'' with ``naan bread''. Curry has been South Asia's most successful export to Britain. When the contestants don apron and cap today, they will turn out food unrecognisable any where from Peshawar to Pondicherry or Dhaka to Dharwad.

British curry, the generic name for food that originates in South Asia, has taken spices and styles of cooking from the sub-continent and transformed them, some would say, into a highly coloured and mostly undifferentiated repertoire in which a vindaloo has nothing to do with the hot vinegary pork original from Goa, and a do piaza rarely sees two rounds of onion in it. These two dishes, like the others popular here are simply used as descriptions of hotness. The average curry menu will list orderof hotness: chicken phall, chicken vindaloo, chicken do piaza, chicken bhuna, chicken korma, chicken madras, etc, and the same again for lamb, beef, prawns, and vegetables.

Today's contestants get 45 minutes to prepare a curry, a side dish and either rice or bread. They are judged on taste, texture, aroma and appearance of the food.

But curry, as they know it, is Britain's favourite food and there is scarcely a town in the country that does not boast at least an Indian ``take-away''. Curry statistics are mind-boggling: There some 8000 Indian restaurants in Britain which employ over 60,000 people. Bradford is the curry capital. It has more curry houses than anywhere else in the country with one restaurant for every 2,000 residents, against the national average of one for every 7,900. The British spend some pounds 2 million a year on curry and as an industry, the Indian restaurant business ranks higher in the British economy than both shipping and steel.

Britishcurry goes hand-in-hand with the other local favourite -- lager. A standard Friday night out, especially in the midlands and northern England, starts at a pub and ends at an Indian restaurant. Here men measure their machoism against their ability to eat seriously spicy food. Curry mythology has it that the hottest curry, called ``curry hell'', is to be had at Newcastle's Rupali Restaurant. Restaurant owner Abdul Latif says, ``It's the impossible combination of red chilli seeds and powder that gets them.''

Ever the innovative businessmen, ``Curry pubs'' are the newest idea to take hold of the spicy sector. These drinkers can tuck into a curry without having to leave the pub. The first curry pub opened earlier this year in the west Midlands and 60 more are planned over the next couple of years. This heart-burn inducing combination is apparently life saving. There is, curry gurus say, new medical evidence that suggests that curries can protect people from the ravages of alcohol. Apparently, chilli stimulatesthe stomach's defences, and helps to prevent ulcers and cell damage.

The curry business has seen some lows recently. A huge amount of heat was generated by an article in the restaurateurs trade magazine which described the average Indian restaurant as depressing dives with surly waiters. Controversy over the use of excessive food colouring in curries and the down market image of curry in popular culture have raised hackles amongst those who earn their livelihood from this sector. The shortage of good chefs is another problem facing Britain's curry industry and an Asian Academy of Culinary Skills in London now hopes to help solve this problem by offering university courses in Indian cooking.