Getting into Guinness Read online

  Getting into Guinness

  One Man’s Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World’s Most Famous Record Book

  Larry Olmsted

  For Allison, Armstrong, Stretch, and Sundance

  Many reasons, many years, much love

  Adrian Hilton recited the Complete Works of Shakespeare nonstop, going five days without sleep to earn his Guinness recognition. At a difficult point in his life, Hilton said a friend told him: “Adrian, if you give up now, you weren’t made of the right stuff in the first place.”

  INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY, MARCH 30, 2007

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  1

  Meet Ashrita, Record Breaker for God

  2

  The Greatest Record of All: Birds, Beaver, Beer, and Sir Hugh’s Impossible Question

  3

  Getting into Guinness Gets Personal

  4

  Guinnessport: Getting into Guinness Goes Prime Time

  5

  15 Minutes of Fame

  6

  Seventy-Two Hours in Hell: Getting Back into Guinness

  7

  The Cheese Does Not Stand Alone: Giant Food and Guinness

  8

  Records Go Global

  9

  The Dark Side: Guinness Records Gone Bad

  Epilogue

  Appendix 1: The Stories of My Favorite Records

  Appendix 2: The Long Way into Guinness: An Ode to Drudgery

  Appendix 3: So You Want to Be a Record Breaker?

  Appendix 4: A Record-Breaking Timeline

  Acknowledgments

  Endnotes

  Searchable Terms

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  Guinness World Records is the current name of the book that has become the biggest international best seller of all time, and it is published by Guinness World Records Ltd., a London-based company. However, both the book’s title and ownership have changed several times throughout its history, so to make things less confusing, I offer the following brief explanation.

  The book was originally titled The Guinness Book of Records and published in 1955 by Superlatives Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Arthur Guinness & Sons, the huge brewing company that also made Guinness Stout. Superlatives Ltd. later became known as Guinness Publishing, and its parent company as Guinness PLC. Guinness PLC is now part of multinational beer, wine, and spirits conglomerate Diageo PLC. In 1999 Guinness Publishing changed to its current name, Guinness World Records Ltd., but has also been sold and resold and is no longer associated in any way with the brewery or with Diageo, except for the common use of the word “Guinness” in beer and book.

  When first released in the United States, the book was briefly titled The Guinness Book of Superlatives, then quickly repackaged in a cover titled Superlatives Book of World Records, and soon became The Guinness Book of Records once again, and then The Guinness Book of World Records, which I believe is its best known and most widely used title, and what many fans still call it today. To further confuse matters, for more than twenty years the U.S. version was produced and distributed under license by Sterling Publishing in New York, but now it is fully owned and produced by Guinness World Records Ltd. In general, the U.S. and English editions will be referred to interchangeably throughout this work, though there were often minor differences between the two even in the same years, and some records were recognized only by one or the other version.

  Throughout this book I use the original title, The Guinness Book of Records, the current title, Guinness World Records, and the in-between title, The Guinness Book of World Records. In addition, I use the simpler terms “Guinness book,” “book of records,” and even “The Book” when referring to the same work. Likewise, in describing the records themselves (each officially called by the plural “Guinness World Records”), I variously referred to them as Guinness Records, Guinness World Records, records, world records, the Guinness World Record, while identifying the record holders as record holders, world record holders, and Guinness World Record holders, among other possible descriptions.

  Since the company, its book, and its records now have virtually the same name, I will italicize Guinness World Records when referring to the book and leave Guinness World Records unadorned when referring to either the records themselves or the company and its editors, staffers, policies, and other products. Similarly, the book’s original creator is variously referred to as Arthur Guinness & Sons, Guinness PLC, and simply Guinness, as well as “the brewing company.”

  Finally, the expressions “Getting into Guinness,” “Get into Guinness,” or variations thereof always refer to an attempt to break or set a record in a manner recognized by Guinness World Records Ltd. and its book Guinness World Records, with the intention of obtaining an official certificate and/or being published in the pages of the book or listed in the company’s record database. These terms do not refer to the literal notion of getting into a beverage brewed by the company that makes Guinness Stout. While there is no longer any association between the brewer and the book, I would like to add that the stout is still excellent after all these years, and several were consumed by me, at my desk, in the writing of this work.

  LSO, November 2007

  In my research for Getting into Guinness, I reviewed countless published sources about the origins and development of Guinness World Records and interviewed many of the more astounding Guinness World Record holders. Combining this research with my own experiences as a fan since reading it as a child, and as the holder of two records, I have attempted to recount the enthralling 50-year history of the Guinness World Records from the perspective of the record holder (or aspiring record holder) looking into a company that has fascinated him from a young age. As such, this book is not an official history of Guinness World Records, nor has it been sponsored, endorsed, authorized, or in any way supported by Guinness World Records. Indeed, Guinness World Records may at some point elect to publish such a book, and, with its extensive archives, I am sure that it would be fascinating.

  Introduction

  JUNE 13, 2004, FOXWOODS CASINO, LEDYARD, CONNECTICUT

  I knew I was in trouble when I got lost on my way back from the bathroom. Or more accurately, I should have known I was in trouble but did not immediately make the connection, for the very same reason I went astray in the first place: I was losing my mind. Getting lost in an unfamiliar place is not surprising. Getting lost in plain sight of where you want to go, just thirty yards away, when you are intimately familiar with the route, is something altogether different. Something crazy.

  It was a security guard who first noticed my plight, perhaps sympathetic to my confused and vacant expression. Or more likely he was alarmed by what could only be construed as signs of madness, signs he must have surely seen before, given his place of employment. After all, this was Foxwoods, the world’s largest casino, a self-contained city, a labyrinth of booze, bad behavior, and flashing lights, which never, ever closes.

  “Can I help you?” he offered suspiciously.

  “I’m trying to find the poker room,” I stammered by way of reply, and then recognition dawned on his face.

  “Oh, you’re the world record guy! Sure, let me show you the way!” I followed his eager footsteps, and when we were within a few steps of the table, my friend Joe Kresse rushed toward me in a panic.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I got lost.”

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Someone who could not walk in a straight line for thirty seconds to a place that h
ad become a second home had some serious issues. At the moment, my most serious issue was sleep, or rather lack thereof. It had been nearly seventy hours since I had last closed my eyes. That might not sound like so long until you think of it as two full days, meaning days and nights, plus another half-day tacked on for good measure. Then add seven more hours. If you are reading this on Sunday evening, think about staying up until midday Wednesday. And you would still not be done. But you would be tired, confused, and probably hallucinating as well. I was.

  I had begun playing poker at the Foxwoods Casino in Mashuntucket, Connecticut, at 1 PM on Thursday June 10, 2004. I had already been up for more than 6 hours when I first started playing, because I had gone into Hartford to appear on the local morning television news show. After returning to the casino I had played all day Thursday, through Thursday night, then all day Friday and Friday night, and then all day Saturday. It was now somewhere around four in the morning on Saturday night, or Sunday morning depending on your perspective, and I was tired, more tired than I could imagine anyone has ever been. I was beyond any measure of exhaustion I had ever known or even conceived of, not just physically but also mentally. To put it in the simplest terms, my brain had stopped working.

  I once did a twenty-four-hour mountain bike ride, an arduous physical feat through an entire night in the woods. On many of my trips as a journalist, such as flying to and from Asia, I have been severely jet lagged and sleep deprived. On several occasions, I have flown overnight to Europe without sleep after a full day of work, and then worked through another long day and late until the following night. I pulled college all-nighters, and in those years also had a bit of practice with booze and the occasional mind-altering substance. But none of those experiences could even remotely compare to the state of disconnect I achieved at Foxwoods simply by staying awake. I avoided alcohol altogether, drank ample water, and lots of coffee, but by hour forty-eight, I started to have visual distortions, and by the time I got lost en route from the bathroom, I had progressed to full-blown hallucinations of the mirage-in-the-desert variety. That was hour seventy without sleep and hour sixty-four of poker playing, with just over eight remaining. The past twelve hours had been the worst: every time I glanced up from the table, things looked markedly different. The room itself changed size and shape with alarming frequency, the walls expanding and contracting, alternatingly creating a space so vast it seemed to go on forever and so small I seemed to be playing cards in someone’s garage. Ditto for the table and its surroundings, which began morphing by the minute. At one point I became absolutely convinced that the table was set in a white gazebo elevated above all the other gaming tables on the casino floor. The players, many of whom had been by my side for eight hours or more, suddenly were unfamiliar and unrecognizable. At one point I looked around at their faces and abruptly became convinced I was at the wrong table, because everyone and everything looked so alien. Panicked, I stood up and tried to leave, desperate to get to where I felt I should be, but the dealer begged me to stay, knowing I was in the right place—or at least where I was supposed to be. The truly right place was probably a psychiatric hospital. Mentally, I did not think it could get any worse. But I had yet to hit bottom.

  How did I get to this point? What madness compelled me to risk my physical and mental health? Why would I—or anyone—think playing poker for days without a break was a good idea? The answer is simple: to set a Guinness World Record.

  2005, LONDON, ENGLAND, FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS

  When the Guinness record book reached its half-century mark, its editors celebrated with parties, TV specials, record-breaking events, and a special edition of the book, covered in shiny metallic gold. My name is in that book, and will be, forever. Fittingly, this was the result of a 2003 visit to Ireland, the birthplace of all things Guinness: it was an article in a local newspaper that first rekindled my boyhood interest in the record book. I knew the book, of course, everyone does, but I had no idea it had such a rich history. Most impressive was its unique status as the world’s all-time number one copyrighted best seller, having sold well over 100 million copies in thirty-seven different languages. The article described a book that became a phenomenon, and spawned a global entertainment empire of television shows, literally hundreds of spin-off book titles, a widely syndicated cartoon of records, and a global collection of museums. In addition, records were plastered on paper cups, greeting cards, T-shirts, even a board game. Record mania, according to the article, showed no signs of slowing down: every single year, like clockwork, the book sells more than a million copies in the States, and 3.5 million worldwide, annually making the best-seller lists here and abroad.

  Surely, I thought, as the freelance journalist inside me pondered the ramifications, there has to be something worth writing about in all this. There was, and less than two years later, I would be reading about myself in the pages of Guinness World Records. But I still had a lot to learn.

  JUNE 2006, HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

  “HE is in the Guinness Book of World Records!” a slightly tipsy reveler 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 endeavors 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 seventy-two 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 center 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 fifteen 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 colorful, 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 armor—while riding in an airplane—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 m
uch alive rattlesnakes more shocking than eating an entire airplane 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 sixty-eight-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 encyclopedia, 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 fueled 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.