The most pointless speech

The most pointless speech ever given was an address to the board of GlamSinClean inc. by one of their Regional Directors, Gerald Hompknee, in 1991. In his presentation of annual figures, he started reading from a piece of homework by his 6 year-old son Jimmy, who had put it in his father’s briefcase for him to read. Mister Hompknee later admitted, “When I started reading from Jimmy’s ‘Why I’m not scared to sit on the toilet any more’ essay, I thought I was in real trouble at first, but I managed to turn it into a metaphor for management strategies, and it was actually very well received. In fact, I’ve had Jimmy and his little sister Elaine contribute to every speech I’ve done since.”

Hompknee, appearing at a University of Exeter conference on "Serendipity and Chaos Theory in Public Speaking" in 1999, . Photograph by University of Exeter.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The most over-priced computer repair

The most over-priced computer repair was carried out on the 11^th November 2004, when Barry Quigley, a computer repairman from Wellington, New Zealand, charged $437.68 for removing a piece of Ham and Pineapple pizza from the CD-drive of Marty Halland’s PC.

“I feel sorry for him,” said Quigley at the time, ”but hopefully this will make him remember which appliance does what job. A month ago he asked me to defragment his dishwasher, and I had to charge him $25 for the call-out charge.”

Quigley took several photographs of the opened computer, explaining later that,

"I mean, come on! After pizza in the CD tray, I had no idea what else he had done to it, and I wasn't about to leave, I don't know, a goldfish on the motherboard, and have him say I put it there or something later.'"

Photograph by _rockinfree.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The most drawn-out day of Association Football

The most drawn-out day of Association Football was in Poland, on Saturday 30^th November 1946. Due to the effects of war-time rubber rationing, only 5 balls were available for the whole of the national league, comprised of 19 teams. To cope with this, a one-off ruling was made that every time the ball went out of play at one match a ball-boy was chauffeured, with the ball, to the nearest stadium, so that that game would continue. After kicking off at 8am, the final whistle of the last game was sounded at 10:53 that night. The shortest game of the day had lasted 5 hours and 23 minutes, and one game had had a 42 minute half-time break, waiting for the next ball.

Karol Casimir, captain of Pelikan Radom, a club which does not exist now, but was the first club to kick off on this day of football. they actually managed 15 minutes before the ball was removed to be taken to anoher match. Speaking later, Casimir said,

"I was worried at first, as I knew other teams were waiting for our ball. One of my teammates, I won't name them, asked if we should kick the ball out deliberately, in order to allow other teams to start, but I told him that was not in the spirit of Pelikan, or the spirit of the game."

Photograph by Von Aisaider.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The shortest running television series

The shortest running television series ever was ‘My Boss Is A Wheelbarrow’, an American sitcom which was cancelled 8 minutes into its pilot episode. Buddy Marvin, a network executive said, 

“We’ve put some real bilge out over the years, but this was just really bad.”

The specially-modified wheelbarrow that was used to play the charcter of "Robson McGonnagle", the titular boss of the show. It had had attatchments fitted that allowed it to be moved by a stagehand, and bounce. Photograph by Rocpoc.

 ©2013 James Mathurin 

The lightest ever bulldozer

The lightest ever bulldozer was constructed by Hiromi “Shogun of Origami” Shumizuko of Tokyo, Japan. The working model, constructed almost entirely of construction paper, weighed in at 22 kilograms, and was used by Shumizuko to plough an acre of grassland in Shiretoko National Park, on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, in March 2002, until it collapsed in a light shower.

An origami bull which was also constructed by Shumizuko to accompany the origami bulldozer and a planned tractor in a field for an outdoors "Henry Moore-style" installation". When the bulldozer was ruined, Shumizuko abandoned the tractor project, and sold the bull to a private collector. Photograph by Scarygami.

 ©2013 James Mathurin