Guinness World Records: How the Irish brewer became an authority on firsts, feats and pub trivia

Shooting party dispute in 1951 gave rise to bestselling annual account of amazing achievements

A pint of the black stuff (iStock)

Guinness World Records publishes its latest print edition on Thursday.

The book recounting record-breaking achievements from all manner of disciplines across the world is now in its 63rd edition and continues to be a bestseller, the place to go for anyone interested in finding out who is the world’s most tattooed man or who built the fastest jet-powered go-kart.

The idea came about in 1951 when Sir Hugh Beaver, managing director of the world famous Irish brewery, attended a shooting party at Castlebridge House on the River Slaney in County Wexford, where the group fell to arguing about which was Europe’s fastest game bird: the golden plover or red grouse.

Failing to find a reference book containing the answer in his host’s library, Sir Hugh realised this was precisely the sort of question that might vex drinkers chatting over a pint of the black stuff in pubs across the land.

Recalling the shooting dispute in 1954, Sir Hugh pitched a Guinness promotional campaign centred around answering general knowledge trivia to the journalists Ross and Norris McWhirter, twin brothers and research specialists on London’s Fleet Street, recommended to him by their university friend Christopher Chataway, a Guinness employee and future Conservative MP.

The McWhirters agreed to compile a list of interesting facts and figures for a tome to be found on every bar top courtesy of the company, spending 13 and a half 90-hour weeks on the project.

A trial run of the very first Guinness Book of Records was published in August 1954 and distributed to local watering holes.

A new publishing company, Guinness Superlatives, was incorporated that November and opened its doors on the top floor of 107 Ludgate House on Fleet Street, the site of an old gymnasium.

After some revisions were made, the first edition of 198 pages went on sale on 27 August 1955 and topped the Christmas bestseller lists that year, flying off the shelves every year thereafter.

Sir Hugh Beaver, the first Guinness World Records book, Ross and Norris McWhirter (Guinness World Records)

Between 1972 and 2001, the BBC children’s show Record Breakers discussed achievements from the book, featuring the McWhirter Brothers answering questions from the audience with the aid of their encyclopedic memories. That segment was tragically brought to a close when Ross McWhirter was assassinated by the Provisional IRA in 1975, prompting Norris to continue alone.

As the book’s fame grew, the brewer found itself in the unusual position of being recognised as an international authority on a wide array of world records, providing adjudicators to oversee new attempts at ever-more unlikely feats.

Members of the public can apply to set a new record or break an old one via the Guinness World Records website, where many of its achievements are recorded in its “Hall of Fame”, home to free-falling astronaut Felix Baumgartner and Otto the skateboarding bulldog. According to Guinness, the book only has space to house 4,000 records out of the 40,000 the company holds.

Among the most common records challenged are the longest DJ marathon, the heaviest item lifted with glue and the most apples bobbed in a minute. The world's oldest person is also, understandably, a record that changes constantly.

In a nice irony, the Guinness annual has itself broken records in the intervening decades, selling more than 100m copies over 100 countries and 37 languages.