TODAY is Pancake Day and here are some fun facts about Shrove Tuesday:

1. The idea of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday is more than 1,000 years old... They were originally invented as a way of using up all the leftover fatty and rich foods before Lent begins tomorrow - Ash Wednesday.

2. The “shrove” in “Shrove Tuesday” is the past tense of the old verb to shrive, which means to confess one’s sins - the only other surviving use of the verb is in the phrase “short shrift” which was a quick confession given to condemned criminals before execution. 

3. In total, Brits use 52 million eggs on Pancake Day - that’s 22 million more than any other day.

4. The first recorded pancake race was in Olney, Buckinghamshire, in 1445 apparently because a woman who forgot the time ran out of her house, still carrying her pan and pancake, when she heard church bells ringing for mass.

5. The largest pancake ever made measured 15 metres and weighed in at three tonnes – you’ll need a lot of sugar and lemon for that one.

6. The most flips anyone has ever done with a pancake is 349 flips in two minutes...

7. In France, people like to make a wish before flipping their pancakes. They do this while holding a coin in the other hand.

8. On average we consume two pancakes per person on Pancake Day, which means that we get through 117 million pancakes in one day! This requires enough milk to fill more than 93 Olympic swimming pools and almost 13 million kilos of plain flour.

9. We all have our preferences for pancake toppings but the weirdest pancake toppings have to be sour cream and caviar, ketchup and mustard, peanut butter and ice cream, coco pops and cream, cream cheese and strawberries.

Graham Rowcliffe, owner of Dotty's Cafe in Old Town, demonstrates how to cook a tropical fruit pancake with crème fraîche and a chocolate and hazelnut pancake below

10. Before baking soda was invented, cooks often used fresh snow as it contained ammonia, which helped the pancakes come out fluffy and soft.

11. William Shakespeare mentions pancakes in his plays All’s Well That Ends Well and As You Like It.

12. The first ready-mix food was Aunt Jemima pancake flour sold in 1889 in St Joseph, Missouri.

13. The highest pancake toss reached 329cm high. Good luck trying to beat that!

14. In France and the United States Pancake day is called Mardi Gras which means 'Fat' or 'Grease Tuesday'.