Exactly How Big Is Shane Warne’s Mouth? A Long Overdue Investigation

I preface this clearly worthy academic endeavour by stating that the following is being produced purely in the interests of anthropological study. Ridicule or shame is not at the heart of this piece, nor is any sense of novelty. This is a serious investigation, adhering to strict research standards, that is not – as the Einsteinian phrase so succinctly goes – here to yuck anyone’s yum. In the trail blazed by men who gazed up at the moon and bravely dared to reach, so too am I looking at the classic photos of Shane Warne deep throating a glass and wondering just how big the cunt’s gob really is. And thus, we investigate.

But first, a quick history lesson.

In 2013, Shane Warne was handily retired from all forms of cricket, and was three years removed from the dizzying spiral endured by his seminal TV chat show Warnie.

During a visit to the races at Royal Ascot, a clearly at-the-crossroads Warne let off steam with a few drinks and a lung lolly or two. But thanks to the presence of press photographers, this specific incident quickly became something else entirely.

Having spotted the waiting photographers, Warne took the opportunity to ham things up. He raised his glass, acknowledged their presence, and then shoved the whole glass into his mouth for reasons that remain, to this day, largely unknown.

Pictures from the event capture a three-act play in its entirety.

The idea is spawned, and the feat contemplated.

Image: Getty/Max Mumby

The attempt made.

Image: Getty/Max Mumby

And the end result shown off for all and sundry.

Image: Getty/Max Mumby

Before we leap into wild assumptions as to the sheer gape of the gob required to toss a whole ass glass up in it, we should pause and appreciate some of the variables in play here.

The size of the glass itself is vitally important to understanding the lengths to which Shane Warne split his mouth hole apart to get it in there. At face value, Warne appears to be cradling a highball glass of non-spectacular variance.

But do the proportions of Warne himself skew this perception?

At a reported 183cm tall Warne is of marginally above average height – the average Australian male stands at 175.6cm tall, per data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That discrepancy from the average has some knock-on effects as far as hand size goes. The importance of which will become clear momentarily.

Average male hand size, measured from base of the palm to the tip of the middle finger, clocks in around 19.3cm. Assuming that ratio holds (and you simply have to assume it), at 183cm tall it can be expected that Shane Warne sports a hand measurement, from palm to rude finger, of 20.1cm.

There has been some social media-based suggestion that Warne’s hands skew far larger than that, as evidenced in the below unfounded claim.

However the evidence provided suffers from clear issues of distorted image perception, and simply must be discounted in this instance. Purely on visual evidence alone, there is nothing to suggest that the size of Shane Warne’s hands is anything other than average.

So by taking that assumed hand measurement and comparing it to the Royal Ascot imagery, we can begin to gain a better understanding of the size of the glass in play here. This, in turn, will inform all estimates of just how bloody big Shane Warne’s food chute is.

Observe the way the glass sits forward in the fingers – not in the palm of the hand. Warne is under no strain to safely cradle his beverage vessel here.

Your standard highball glass has a diameter of around 7cm, which gives it a circumference of 22cm. And while that exceeds hand length marginally, the hand span created as a result – from middle finger to tip of thumb – could quite easily encircle the glass, lending credence to the theory that it is a standard highball.

However, the slenderness of the glass suggests that we may be dealing with a Collins glass instead.

With a narrower diameter of 6cm, leading to a circumference of just under 19.5cm, we can assume that – owing to the relaxed hold of the glass that Warne has – this may be a better fit for our investigations.

And thus, we come to the mouth.

With everything we’ve assumed to be true here – that Warne’s hands are the size they are, meaning the glass in question is a Collins glass – for a mouth to full encircle the rim of the vessel, it would require it to be stretched to at least 6cm on both the X and Y axes.

To that end, there is ample photographic evidence to draw that conclusion along both planes.

We have the splayed lip-to-lip gape across the vertical Y axis:

And its comparably wide-fucking-open counterpart on the horizontal X:

Leading us to state with some degree of confidence that Shane Warne’s mouth can stretch to a maximum limit of 6cm in each direction simultaneously.

Per dental research, the average person’s mouth opening ranges from 35mm to 50mm. Warne’s head hole theoretically exceeds this limit by a full 10mm.

And thus, having assessed all the variables in this specific case and presented the research in plain terms, we can comfortably draw the conclusion that Shane Warne does, indeed, have a big fucking mouth.

I thank you for your time.

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