There are some rubbish books around at the moment. Rip-offs of Schott's Miscellany. The Marmite cookbook. How to be a Footballer's Wife. Build Your Own Snow Globe. The Beyblade Annual 2004. It must be nearly Christmas. But the saddest publishing travesty in the nation's bookshops this Autumn has to be the Guinness Book of Records. Born in 1955, this annual repository of superlative knowledge has sold a record-breaking nigh-100 million copies worldwide, and is surely the most successful piece of alcohol sponsorship of all time. The biggest, the tallest, the longest, the widest - they're all here. Or at least they used to be.
I own a copy of the secondGuinness Book of Records, a blue hardback from 1956 with proud gold lettering. It was all very serious back then, a book to settle pub arguments, assuming people used to argue about the largest blast furnace, the tallest flagstaff and the highest parliamentary majority in those days. Serious maybe, but comprehensive and potentially useful. The tallest giraffes are 3 feet taller than a London trolleybus. Britain's largest turnip weighed 16 pounds. The world's longest railway tunnel runs from Morden to East Finchley (via Bank) on the Northern line. The most expensive English footballer was a certain J Sewell, transferred from Sheffield Wednesday to Notts County for a massive £34,000. Proper facts, the lot of them.
Jump ahead to 1972 and giraffes are now 5 feet taller than a London double decker bus, turnips are up to 33lb 8oz, and Martin Peters of West Ham has raised that transfer fee ceiling to £200,000. Carefully catalogued detail. Onward to 1993 and we still get proper facts. The world's oldest man died in Japan aged 120 years 237 days. The fastest computer chip can run at 200 MHz. Roy Castle and Cheryl Baker hold the world record for the longest ever rope slide, 366m down from the top of the Blackpool Tower. And David Platt and Paul Gascoigne were both sold to Italian clubs for £5½million. Even ten years ago, the Guinness Book of Records was still a fascinating read.
Not so any more. The annual GBoR is now a picture book, a compilation of tabloid soundbites, a freakshow of irrelevance. No more giant vegetables, no more longest tunnels, no more British transfer records. Instead you can discover the greatest weight lifted with one ear (50kg), the oldest person to ski to the North Pole (77 yr old Jack MacKenzie), the most body piercings in one session (90), the biggest nail clipper collection (some bloke in South Africa has 505) and the highest ollie (113cm) (it's a skateboarding leap, apparently). Improper facts, about which I no longer care. Shame. So, if you're thinking of buying someone this flashy-covered hardback as a Christmas stocking-filler, don't bother, they won't read it. Go visit a car boot sale and buy five old copies for your money instead, back from the days when Guinness had more body and far less froth.
