You may not want to join in (this one really is for mad dogs and West Countrymen only) but for the spectacle, the cheese roll is worth a look, writes John Hudson

T he chant that goes up from thousands of Gloucestershire voices just before noon on Spring Bank Holiday Monday is "Roll the cheese! Roll the cheese!", as the normally placid Cooper's Hill gears up for its annual two hours of jollity with violence.

If you like your entertainment raw in tooth and claw, this is the day out for you. If your work is in health and safety, avert your gaze – and don't, whatever you do, try to stop it. It's been going on far too long, and its supporters are far too robust, to be challenged.

This is one corner of England where more genteel tastes – or just plain common sense, if you like – will never prevail.

It's hard to pin down exactly how long it's struck scores of men, and more latterly women, as a good idea to hurtle 100 yards down a one-in-two hillside of treacherously slippery grass in pursuit of eight-pound cheeses packed in corrugated paper.

There's talk about the Phoenicians, ancient Britons or the Romans, but it's hard to imagine that the latter, in particular, could have been so stupid. The first written evidence of the event dates from 1826, but it is clear that it was already an old tradition by then.

Back in the 17th century it was just part of the annual Cooper's Hill Wake, one of those country sports bonanzas along the lines of the Cotswold Olimpicks, near Chipping Campden. Other events included shin kicking, wrestling for a belt and grinning or gurning through a horse's collar for a cake. There's speculation that the cheese rolling part of the proceedings was some kind of rite of passage for youths.

Another relic of the wake is the scattering of sweets on the hill after the races for children to scramble for. Cake and biscuits were used in the past, probably as a fertility rite to encourage a good harvest.

In and just after World War II, with rationing in force, the "cheeses" were wooden discs. But that's history, and for the past 21 years the prizes have been hand-made by Mrs Diana Smart of Birdwood, on the other side of Gloucester, using milk from her herd of Brown Swiss, Holstein and Old Gloucester cows.

She sells them for about £33 each at farmers' markets in places like St Briavels and Lydney, and you might think that would be a better way to acquire one.

Just occasionally, it can all get out of hand. In 1997, the event won unwelcome headlines all over the world when 33 people were injured, including a spectator who tried to dodge a bouncing cheese, lost his balance and tumbled 100 feet down the hill. The winner of one of the races, 21-year-old postman Craig Carter, broke an arm – but he said that was only fair, as he'd broken the other one when he won three years earlier.

The organisers were so shaken that the event was cancelled in 1998 – but it came back the following year, when there was no more than the usual crop of bumps and bruises.

Two tough guys from Gloucester dominate the awards over the years, Stephen Gyde of Brockworth and Steve Brain. Stephen won 21 races in 14 years, between 1978 and 1991, while Steve took 18 cheeses in 17 years, from 1984 to 2000, and the rivalry between the two was legendary in the years they overlapped.

Last year's races were a mudbath, in torrential rain. About 2,500 turned up to watch, but on a good day you might expect nearly double that number to line the slope. The comedian Rory McGrath, then 52, gave one of the races a go, but came last and is not expected to return. "I think my low centre of gravity counted against me," he said, which doesn't sound quite right.

Chris Anderson, now 21, will almost certainly be back in the thick of it, having won three races since 2005. He was stretchered off wearing a neck brace on a spinal board after flying head over heels to clinch his win last year, but stayed on to watch the fun after he'd been patched up. Winner of the women's race, on a day that pulled in competitors from as far away as Australia, New Zealand and Japan, was 17-year-old Flo Early, who had travelled just along the A46 from Painswick.

"Next year I want to take on the boys," she said. If the boys turn out to be anything like Messrs Gyde and Brain of yore, let's hope she thinks again. There's a limit to this kind of thing.

It's free both to watch and compete in the Cooper's Hill cheese rolling, and no booking is needed for either. There are five main races, one of them for women, at 20-minute intervals from noon on Monday, May 25, plus other unofficial events including uphill runs for children.

Cooper's Hill, near Brockworth, is just off the A46 Cheltenham-Stroud Road, just over a mile south of Brockworth.

The well-marked official car park, off the A46, is a quarter-mile walk from the hill, and the £5 parking fee is the organisers' main source of income. Because of this they discourage the use of other car parks, but these provide useful overflow parking if, as last year, the official site fills up early.