Attempt to be made on 100 records

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34132, 20 April 1976, Page 13

Attempt to be made on 100 records

(By

PEARSON PHILLIPS,

>. of the Observer Foreign

News Service)

LONDON. Times may be hard for Britain. But a group of London businessmen are staking $500,000 to finance what they call “a massive bit of summer fun.” The plan, in brief, is to hire a 400-acre racecourse at Lmgfield in Sussex and to use it as an arena for an attack on one hundred of the more eccentric entries listed in the “Guinness Book of Records." The longest political speech (29 hours 5 minutes by a Mr Gerard O’Donnell in Kingston-upon-Hull in 1959) will be challenged. So will the 28 hours 45 minutes of continuous brass band blowing (City of Oxford Youth Band), the 122-hour chess marathon (Mike Murphy and Leo Knoblauch, Ohio, U.S.A., April, 1975) and the 24 ounces haggis eating record of 2 minutes 42 seconds (W. McVeigh, Northamptonshire, 1972). About 100,000 people are expected to go to this “crowd-compelling fun festival,” which modestly calls itself “Cosmorama,” timed for the four days of the August Bank Holiday (August 27-30). There seems little reason to doubt that they will. Apart from the attraction of watching people competing in the baked bean eating (1823 baked beans in 30 minutes) there is to be a creche, adventure playground and bingo. Sample of fun At the launching party in London several gallons of champagne and a few gross of champagne glasses were lost in abortive attempts to beat the “Champagne Fountain” record (held at present by a team from San Luis Obispo, California, with a column 17 glasses high). Just a sample of fun to come. The inspiration stems from the late Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband and recent history’s brashest showman. A young British publicist named Douglas Mew read Todd’s dictum that “if you create a big enough spectacle people will flock to see it.” He also bore in mind another Todd principle, which was that you don’t cut back on life’s little luxuries, even if you owe a million dollars. From there it was a short step to think of the “Guinness Book of Records” (which overtook the Bible as top selling volume in 1974) and marry the two together. Enter, at this point, a small, shrewd Scots public relations consultant named Peter Johnston, who normally handles the staider type of engineering account. He has grafted a commercial basis on to the operation.

Every record attempt is being offered to a sponsor, who will pay between $2400 and $12,000 for the privilege of having their names attached to it. The racecourse is being split up into 36 zones and a sponsor gets a small stand and all the people necessary for controlling record attempts for his money. One or two sponsorships seem cut and dried. Meat manufacturers will doubtless squabble over the right to take on the 30-minute meat pie eating contest (now standing at 19 pies, weighing five ounces each). Zone 21 is called "‘Toss Pots Tavern,” and will be devoted to such activities as the one pint of beer contest (at 1.18 seconds), the threepints yard of ale (6.0 seconds) and the two pints of beer drunk upside down (at 6.4 seconds). Which brewery will be behind the bar for that? There are some curious juxtapositions. In Zone 17, contestants will be struggling for the bagpipe blowing record, currently held by four member of the Broken Hill Cameron Pipe Band of Australia with 77 hours. Next door in Zone 23, choirs will be contesting the 33hour choral marathon set by the Sixth Form of Bingley Beckfoot Grammar School, West Yorkshire. The cash flow projection for the enterprise looks pretty good on paper. Including the hire of Lingfield Racecourse from owners Ladbroke’s the cost of staging the event is calculated at $450,000. The sale of all sponsorships and advertising space would bring in about $600,000. This means that the entry fees will be pure profit. Some of the tarnish of commercialism is removed from these juicy figures by the fact that a percentage of the take will go to charity. The Scouts and the National Association of Boys Clubs are sending helpers (and competitors) in return for a guaranteed donation to their funds. Peter Johnston says he is offering “just the right degree of triviality to suit the British public.” He believes it will have the same compelling attraction as the Miss World contest. “People can indulge themselves at this event and salve their consciences if necessary with the knowledge that they are benefiting charity.” The key to the whole thing is getting newspapers and television to take an interest so that the sponsors get their money’s worth of free advertising. Mr Johnston believes that the media will be attracted like wasps to a late summer picnic. “After all,” he says, “it could be the only really cheerful event this country witnesses all year.” — O.F.N.S. copyright.