When I spoke to Anna Nicholas, who worked as the head of PR for the book in the 80s and 90s, she lamented how things had changed: records are now more sensationalist, she said, to meet the demand of an audience that can see extraordinary things whenever they like on social media. Sales of the book have declined in recent times, and the company has had to find new ways to make money – not all of which have met with the approval of the GWR old guard. The book, which since 1999 has gone by Guinness World Records, is still an overwhelming blizzard of wacky pictures and hard data.īut the company that publishes the book, also called Guinness World Records, is not the same as when I held my first annual, the green and silver 2002 edition. As I flicked through the old editions – 1994, 2005, 2012 – I thought about the connection between Guinness the stout and Guinness the book for the first time, as well as a hundred questions I hadn’t thought to ask as an eight-year-old marvelling at the man with the stretchiest skin or the most needles inserted into his head.Įven now, in the age of YouTube and TikTok, when you can catapult yourself into fame, riches and recognition for feats of all kinds with nothing more complicated than your phone, the Guinness Book of Records continues, somewhat incredibly, to exist. These were books that children gleefully unwrapped on Christmas Day and argued over with their siblings. Back then, the Guinness Book of Records meant a big, brightly coloured, hardback volume containing 500-odd pages of pictures of people doing things like growing their hair very long or juggling knives. I hadn’t thought about this book since I was in primary school. On the table, there were a handful of editions of the Guinness Book of Records. Curiosity got the better of me, and behind the door, I found a room that was empty but for a table. One of the exhibit rooms was closed off, but only partially. But what stayed with me most was something I saw there by accident. You can learn about how barrels are made, get your face printed in the head of a pint and, at the end, have a drink in a bar with a 360-degree view of the city. I’d spent a lot of time in the city before, but I’d never visited the brewery. A couple of summers ago, I went to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.
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