Want to know who can eat the most Smarties using chopsticks? There's only one place to look for the anwer, writes Róisín Ingle
Back in the dark ages of the early 1980s, Record Breakers was compulsive after-school viewing. The late entertainer and multiple record-holder Roy Castle presided over a television studio packed with wannabes and we all crossed our fingers as the man with the spinning plates tried for a place in the Guinness Book of Records. In those pre-PlayStation days, watching a gaggle of schoolchildren quizzing expert Norris McWhirter - sample question: who has the longest ear hair in the world? - held greater fascination than anything revealed on John Craven's Newsround.
The greatest, the longest, the smallest, the strongest - no superlative has been left out of the pages of what's now called Guinness World Records, the 50th-anniversary edition of which was published this week. Subsequent series of Record Breakers, inexplicably fronted by Cheryl Baker from Bucks Fizz, never quite lived up to the original, but in the intervening years the books lost none of their appeal, especially for their main target market: eight-to-12-year-old boys.
This success has as much to do with photographs of the likes of Kim Goodman from the US, who can pop her eyeballs to a distance of 11 millimetres beyond her eye sockets, as it does with more conventional records, such as the fastest-man-on-earth title currently held by Maurice Greene. While many Irish people have become record-breakers over the years (see panel), there is no truth to the rumour that judges of these things are considering Samantha Mumba for Most Revealing Dress Worn On A Chat Show or Bono for Longest Number Of Hours Spent Wearing Sunglasses Indoors.
The iconic book has sold more than 100 million copies, beating both J.K. Rowling and Dr Atkins and making it the biggest-selling copyrighted tome in history. It was the brainchild of former Guinness managing director Hugh Beaver and although the book is no longer formally linked to the stout, the Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin was the appropriate venue for this week's Irish launch.
Inspired by Beaver's confusion at a shooting party in Co Wexford in 1951 about whether the golden plover was the fastest game bird in Europe, the original book was a splatter-proof freebie given out to publicans to settle rows among their clientele.
"Whenever people congregate to talk, they will argue and sometimes the joy lies in the arguing and would be lost if there were a definite answer," wrote Beaver in the preface to the original edition, which is bound in green and bears a harp on its sleeve. "But more often, the argument takes place on a dispute of fact and it can be very exasperating if there is no immediate means of settling the argument."
The book flew out of the pubs, becoming an instant classic - and it didn't stay free for very long.
SOME PEOPLE - THE oldest, the tallest, the smallest - find themselves featured in the book without much effort, while others go to great lengths to be immortalised. One of the more recent Irish record-holders this week defended the more unusual entries.
"If somebody eats a record number of caterpillars in Bolivia, then that is obviously very important to them," said Tony Mangan (37), from Dublin, the current holder of the record for the greatest distance travelled on a treadmill in both 24 and 48 hours. "The people who run the book are interested in keeping records, and each one is as important as the other."
THE KEEPER OF the records, Stuart Newport, agrees. After 18 years in the record-breaking business he is protective of the people who make their way into the bestselling books, even holders of the less obviously useful records. Kathryn Ratcliffe's achievement of eating 138 Smarties in a minute using chopsticks might seem pointless but, says Newport, the records "cover the whole spectrum of existence from the brilliant to the bizarre - and that is the attraction for readers".
One of his personal favourite records is held by Virginia park ranger Roy C. Sullivan, the only human to live through being struck by seven separate bolts of lightning. "He survived the incidents but it did cost him a few eyebrows and the odd toenail," says Newport. Sullivan later killed himself after being spurned in love.
Another record-holder, Tom Leppard, the rather scary-looking man who has 99 per cent of his body tattooed with the markings of a leopard, is a recluse on the Isle of Skye.
You don't have to be eccentric to get in the book, but it certainly helps.
One of the most heart-warming Irish records is held by 87-year-old David Tyndall, who five years ago became the oldest man to pilot a helicopter solo when he took to the skies over Co Kildare. Tyndall's late wife, Moll, gave him helicopter lessons as an 80th birthday present and he still regularly flies light aircraft. "My daughter informed the Guinness people without me knowing. It was an honour and a surprise," Tyndall says.
Sean Shannon, holder of the fastest-talker-in-the-world title, broke his own record twice, the last time in 1995 when he recited a Hamlet soliliquy in 23.8 seconds. "We can't all be peace negotiators or world leaders, most of us are just trying to find interesting ways to pass the time we have," he says in defence of the sillier records.
The faint-hearted will be glad to hear there are plenty of records up for grabs that don't involve body piercing, tattooing or possessing excess amounts of facial hair. The record for most finger clicks in one minute has yet to be established, and surely somebody in Ireland is capable of scoffing more than three cream crackers in the current record time of 37 seconds. As the late Roy Castle sang in his unforgettable television theme tune, "Dedication's all you need. If you wanna be a record breaker, oooh".