THE third annual Oxfordshire Chilli Festival is being held in Abingdon Market Place from 10am today.

Local exotic restaurants, spice merchants and chilli-growers will be competing to blow people’s heads off until 5pm.

The event also including the infamous annual chilli-eating competition, this year at 4pm, where challengers work their way through a banquet of piquant peppers up to and including the world’s hottest variety, the Carolina Reaper.

This year’s festival, organised once again by Dawn Massam of West Hanney, is raising money for the Huntington’s Disease Association and Oxfordshire Mind.