I am no stranger personally to breaking Guinness World Records, as explained and illustrated in the following piece…
Ultimate Love and Happy Tories, Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 3 March 2017
…and (perhaps less plausibly) I did claim another world record as a child, along with Paul Deacon, recorded for all posterity in my diary. This earlier claim has caused some controversy amongst the Alleyn’s School alumni:
Breaking The World Record For Coin Catching With Paul Deacon, Woodfield Avenue, 30 December 1974
So, when my business partner, Michael Mainelli, announced that, in his capacity as Master of the World Traders, he had decreed that the Guiness World Record for the most nationalities simultaneously singing a pop song was to be broken on his watch, I thought I should lend my considerable experience of world-record breaking to the enterprise. Especially as part of the purpose was to raise some money for charity.
The world-record attempt was to be made in conjunction with Goodenough College (a wise and practical move given the size of the college’s hall and its international residency characteristics).
The extant record is (was) 72 nationalities, which doesn’t sound difficult to beat until you try.
My attempts to coerce some of the rarer nationalities to Bloomsbury on the promise of refreshments and a chance to be a record breaker had very limited success.
However, I did turn up myself in my capacity as an Estonian E-Resident as well as a UK national. Whether my E-Residency will count or not is in the hands of the official authenticators. It is on a short list of “others” which might or might not count. But we believe we have kicked the extant record deep into touch even if none of the “others” are accepted. .. (Update: the e-residency didn’t count – but my attendance still counts of course).
Yo!
The first part of the evening was a bit like trying to get through immigration at Heathrow after our beloved Prime Minister has had her bureaucratic way with Brexit. Everyone needed to register, have their nationality documents copied, witnessed, verified…
…only then could you complete the maze and enter the large hall where the sing-along took place.
Even then, we were all put through a further confirming, counting and segmenting into bite-sized zones to enable stewards and witnesses to confirm that we were all singing. We had over 200 people singing, representing up to 87 nationalities (including the three or four odd-bods like me) – well north of the previous record of 72.
But, despite the bureaucracy, it proved to be a great fun evening. There were lots of people I know there and I got to meet some new people too.
The choir-mistress got us to do some excellent warming up exercises to ensure that our minds, bodies and lungs were all to be working at full pelt when we went for the record.
I was at the far end of the room – you can probably see three or four pixels of me in the above photo.
Then we practiced by singing “I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing”. I remember, even as a small child, finding that song cheesy. Yet it still turns out to be even cheesier than I remembered it:
Then we warmed up some more with Mamma Mia – another cheesy song but one with more communal fun singing characteristics:
But the actual world-record attempt song was Imagine, which we practiced once and then sang in full, even repeating the third verse to make absolutely sure that we exceeded three minutes, a required factor for our record it seems:
Actually, when we performed Imagine the second time – i.e. for the formal record-breaking attempt, it was a very moving experience. I think we all felt a sense of international cameradie and in the end we linked arms and swayed to the rhythm of our singing.
After the record attempt, the choir-mistress led us in another Mamma Mia to let off steam.
Then drinks. Plenty of them.
There were rumours on the night that a commercial enterprise was going to trying to break the very same record the next night. Indeed they sent some spies who tried to recruit singers from our event, which felt a bit sleazy to me. Anyway, word is, that those chancers only reached the 72 previously achieved and that our record should be confirmed.
We should learn quickly if/that our effort has been confirmed as a new world record. We ‘re quietly confident. I’ll update this posting once we know. Until then, you’ll have to imagine.
Update: the world record was confirmed and extolled some three week’s later while Janie and I were in Japan meditating atop a holy mountain.
Yo!