Getting into Guinness: One man’s longest, fastest, highest journey inside the world’s most famous record book. Larry Olmsted

Чтение книги онлайн.

      “HE is in the Guinness Book of World Records!” a slightly tipsy reveller tells her date, just a bit too loudly. I’m at a dinner party and wine is flowing freely. I know what’s coming next. A hush descends around the table and ignoring it will not end the silence. I am not going to get out of this room without recounting at least one of my Guinness record-setting endeavours and answering the identical questions that inevitably follow. Did you get paid? What was the record before? How did you do that? Why did you do that? How did you think of that? Why poker? Why golf? Why Australia? Why 72 hours? What’s next? Were you on TV? Does it have anything to do with the beer?

      People of every age and background have an insatiable thirst for all things Guinness, and I’ve learned that once the topic of world records comes up, the genie is out of the bottle: like it or not, I become the centre of undivided attention. The bottom line is that the book has a glorifying effect on all its record holders, which is why people are so eager to get into it. Guinness World Records is a collection of celebrities, famous and also paradoxically anonymous, promising its most dedicated readers a moment in the sun. It offers otherwise unknowns like me the opportunity to grab 15 minutes of fame and achieve a glimmer of so-called ‘greatness’, joining the ranks of elite athletes, scientists, world leaders, explorers and adventurers who comprise its lengthy list of record holders. On the cocktail circuit, a Guinness World Record makes you an instant celebrity in a culture that has never been more obsessed with celebrity, and for many of us it is the only such path. I can most assuredly say that I will never be the first man on the moon, become the world’s longest-serving head of state, its most syndicated columnist or set the lifetime mark for most bones broken, highest box office take, PGA Tour earnings, career batting average or most Tour de France titles, but I did manage to join Neil Armstrong, Fidel Castro, Ann Landers, Evel Knievel, Harrison Ford, Tiger Woods, Ty Cobb and Lance Armstrong in the pages of Guinness. Hell, I’ve set more records than some of them.

      My records are odd, offbeat and arguably pointless, but compared to many of my peers they are totally mundane. When I first wrote the proposal for this book, my agent asked me to make it more colourful, specifically suggesting that I select half a dozen really outlandish records that would shock, amaze and/or cause rib-breaking laughter among the editors considering buying my work. Surprisingly, this turned out to be the most difficult component of my proposal. Because singling out six Guinness World Records as especially absurd is like being asked to pick six famous people to illustrate the history of civilization. Is the attempt to break the elapsed time record for wearing a full suit of armour - while riding in an aeroplane - more illustrative of odd nuances than the creative loophole used by the mayor of a Spanish city, which, after coming up literally miles short in its attempt to create the world’s largest sausage, set about convincing the book’s staff to create a special category just for ‘largest chorizo sausage’? Is stuffing one’s mouth with ten large, poisonous and very much alive rattlesnakes more shocking than eating an entire aeroplane ground into metal filings? Which is more impressive: growing the world’s longest beard, which took years, or growing the longest ‘beard of bees’, done in just minutes by a 68-year-old Ohio beekeeper who used a queen in a tiny box strapped below his jaw to attract a staggering 17,500 bees onto his chin? Bringing to mind the timeless debate of quantity versus quality, did the 14,718 Japanese record holders all drinking tea together outdo the largest gathering of people dressed as gorillas, a scant 637 participants in London’s Great Gorilla Fun Run? Perhaps my only easy choice was Germany’s Rudy Horn, who won me over with his panache. When Horn set the record for Most Teacups Caught On Head While Unicycling, he threw six teacups and saucers - with his feet - catching and balancing them on his head and, lest we forget, all while riding a unicycle. But the stylish Horn was not done: after finishing his successful record, his toes emphatically added a teaspoon and a lump of sugar to the collection on his head. If his was the only feat involving multiple esoteric skills put together in a seemingly impossible combination, my choices would have been easy, but there are dozens, or hundreds, in each ever-changing edition of the book.

      How did it ever come to this? How did the Guinness book, which started life as a stoic academic work intended to be as sexy as a dictionary or encyclopaedia, suddenly become, much to the surprise of its authors, a runaway best seller and eventually THE runaway best seller of all time? How did it morph from reference almanac into an interactive cultural icon that tens of thousands of people would devote enormous amounts of energy, time, money and sometimes even their lives to ‘get into’? Why did it spawn myriad television shows, museums, copycats and spin-offs? Why is it so universally beloved, its appeal effortlessly crossing linguistic, religious and cultural borders? Why is the world of record breaking so fascinating to readers and so obsessive for record breakers? These are the questions that fuelled my journey inside the world’s most famous record book, bringing me face to face with some of its greatest personalities, and I will share the answers I found in the upcoming pages.