The Great Cheeseboard: Londoners in uproar over ‘abysmal’ cheese festival
Event dubbed ‘The Great Cheesefraud’ by disappointed guests

A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
If there’s one thing that Londoners are deadly serious about, it’s their cheese - as the organisers of an “unlimited” cheese and mulled wine feast have found to their cost.
Guests at The Giant Cheeseboard in Greenwich paid upwards of £30 a ticket for a six-hour feast of cheese and mulled wine this weekend, with advertised entertainment including actors dressed as mice, live comedy and a roaring fire.
Tensions began to mount before the club even opened its doors, with impatient fromage fans left in the cold:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Once guests actually got in, social media was shaken by on-the-ground reports that “the wine was cold, the rodent chaperones fell short of expectations and that the fireplace was projected on a screen in the car park marquee,” says The Guardian.
Twitter lit up with outrage as attendees realised they were not getting the experience they expected.
The main attraction proved a particularly disappointment for many, with complaints about the quality and quantity of the promised cheese extravaganza:
For those who were following the debacle from a distance, it was all a bit of a joke:
But only one who has been short-changed on brie and stilton can truly understand the incandescent fury:
One ticketholder told the London Evening Standard: “I have never been to an event where there were so many unhappy people.”
The incident came almost a year to the day after a similarly controversial cheese festival at Borough Market. In December 2016, the market’s annual Evening of Cheese event descended into pandemonium after drawing a far larger crowd than anticipated.
Thousands descended on the free event - not only making some attendees fear for their safety but, possibly even more importantly, preventing many from getting even the faintest sniff of cheese.
The Giant Cheeseboard’s organisers hit back in a lengthy Facebook post in which they rebuffed many of the complaints, including reports of cheese shortages and cold mulled wine.
“We are truly passionate about cheese and have put months of planning and huge investment into this project,” they said.
“We are obviously very upset seeing any negative reactions at all, but to make the statement some of you are in messages and social media is just totally unfair and false!”
Another Giant Cheeseboard evening is planned on 23 December, and organisers urged ticketholders to ignore the bad press, stating: “there categorically is unlimited cheese”.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
French cheesemakers livid over poll
feature And other stories from the stranger side of life
By Chas Newkey-Burden Published
-
Dogs can differentiate between incompetent and nasty people
feature And other stories from the stranger side of life
By The Week Staff Published
-
Model ‘cuts the cheese’ in posh supermarkets
feature And other stories from the stranger side of life
By The Week Staff Published
-
Faeces reveals we loved beer and blue cheese 2,700 ago
feature And other stories from the stranger side of life
By The Week Staff Published
-
Thai fisherman finds whale vomit worth £2.4m
Speed Read And other stories from the stranger side of life
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Chief executive fined $5,000 over fake cheese
Speed Read Company doctored parmesan with ingredients such as wood pulp - and other tall tales
By The Week Staff Published
-
'Dairy crack': cheese as addictive as drugs, study shows
Speed Read Processed foods much more likely to be addictive, with cheese chief among them
By The Week Staff Published