Jack Heslewood (center) has been Mister World for five years now. Image: INQUIRER.net/Armin P. Adina
After moving the final event a week after its original Sept. 28 schedule to Oct. 5, the 2024 Mister World pageant will now be held three months from now, with the culminating show set to Nov. 23.
The male counterpart of the London-based Miss World pageant posted the new date on social media on Monday, Aug. 12. The competition will remain in Vietnam, as earlier announced, and delegates are expected to arrive on Nov. 5.
Manila hosted the previous competition held in 2019, with English rocket scientist Jack Heslewood besting 71 other aspirants to be proclaimed as “the most desirable man in the world.” That edition also underwent several postponements, with the contest originally scheduled in 2018.
The male tilt has been held every two years in the past, since its inception in 1996, except for the 10th edition held in 2019, three years after the ninth installment of the contest, and the one scheduled for later this year that will be held five years since the last one.
With no competition held from 2020 to 2023, Heslewood has become the longest-reigning Mister World titleholder, who has held on to the throne for five years already. The competition where he won was held in August 2019.
No Filipino contender has ever won the top prize, with the highest placement for the Philippines posted by Andrew Wolfe, who finished as first runner-up in 2012 in the competition held in England.
This year, the Philippines will be represented by model and former Century Supebods winner Kirk Bondad, not to be confused with his elder brother Clint, old flame of 2018 Miss Universe Catriona Gray.
Bondad was appointed as Mister World Philippines in 2022, and has been preparing for the international competition for two years already. There were talks back then that a Mister World contest would finally be held that year, but it also did not transpire.