A PUBLICAN who agreed to have a giant cake smashed over his head to raise funds for charity said he would think twice before agreeing to it again.

Doug Hall, landlord of the Golden Lion, in Romanby, Northallerton, said an event to mark the tenth anniversary of he and his wife, Pearl, taking on the pub’s licence saw £1,810 raised for the British Heart Foundation.

Mr Hall said a regular who had recently lost his mother to a heart condition, had paid £75 in an auction for the giant strawberry and cream sponge cake his wife had baked and then offered to donate an extra £150 if he could smother the publican with it.

He said: “It was quite frightening, it was like someone putting a bag over your head.

“The cake could have fed 100 people and was all over me, so I couldn’t breathe for the sponge and cream, I was totally engulfed in cream and strawberries.

“It was all in the fun of the day, but I don’t think I would do it again.”