FOR THE RECORD

From smashing toilet seats to pogoing over parked cars – for over half a century people have been doing all kinds of crazy things to get into the Guinness World Records. But how difficult is it to set a record and what is it that drives people to keep on trying?

- IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS

ON A windy morning at the Olympic Park in east London I find a young man pogoing with as much nervous solemnity as it’s possible to pogo. Tyler Phillips, who has the aura of a surfer out of water, with a Hawaiian shirt and long hair tied back under a helmet, is there to try to break the record for most consecutive cars jumped over on a pogo stick.

Behind him, five taxis are lined up side by side, with a gap of a few metres between each. A dozen Guinness World Records employees stand around to witness this attempt. They include a man in a navy and grey suit with a GWR logo on its breast pocket who’s introduced to me as Craig Glenday, the book’s editor- in-chief. He watches on with the unruffled air of someone for whom seeing a man pogo stick over cars is all in a day’s work.

The atmosphere is tense. Phillips does some practice runs without the cars. On one occasion, he lands up sprawled on the pavement. I wince.

Finally, it’s time. Everyone falls silent. Phillips nails the first jump. Then the second, then the third. After jumping the final taxi and landing unscathed, he lets the pogo stick fall to the ground and does a celebratory backflip, elated.

“Yes!” he shouts, before running over to wrap Glenday in a bear hug. (Phillips has since beaten his own record, jumping over six cars in February 2022.)

Glenday has been part of GWR since 2001, and has, as a result, led an extremely varied professional life.

He has suffered in the line of duty. Once on a trip to Istanbul to meet the woman who can protrude her eyeballs furthest out of her face, he got an insect bite that led to an infection that almost resulted in amputation.