The history of Guinness World Records and our own claim to fame!
Alex Corlett celebrates another fantastic achievement by “The People’s Friend” . . .
WHEN Sir Hugh Beaver, the Guinness Brewery’s Managing Director, was at a shooting party in Ireland, he found himself embroiled in an argument about game birds.
When his group found no definitive source to answer their question, Sir Hugh wondered if there was a gap in the market for something to settle such discussions.
He was introduced to Ross and Norris Mcwhirter, originally sports journalists who started an agency for gathering facts and statistics for the media.
The first book took around three-and-a-half months to write and was released in 1955. Fifty thousand copies were printed, with the intention of supplying them to pubs purely as a way of promoting Guinness.
“The Guinness Book Of Records” was a bestseller before the end of the year and has now sold over 140 million copies in more than 100 countries.
There are currently over 40,000 world records on the Guinness database, but there’s only room for around 4,000 in the book.
Over 1,000 applications for records are received every week, so there are a number of strict criteria for something to be “recordworthy”.
That started the “Friend” staff thinking.
Let’s see . . . a magazine that was launched in 1869 and which has been in continuous publication ever since; a magazine which has charted history in its pages over 150 years, supporting and encouraging its readers through two world wars; a magazine which began when Queen Victoria was on the throne and yet is still going strong today . . .
Surely there would be something in that impressive list that would meet the criteria?
It appears that Guinness thought so, too!
In January 2019 “The People’s Friend” picked up a Guinness World Record all of its own, for the “Longest-running Women’s Magazine”. The certificate was unveiled at our birthday celebrations in January by D.C. Thomson’s own Mr Murray Thomson and Ellis Watson – a lovely start to our birthday year.
We always knew we were amazing – now we have a certificate to prove it! ■