Least succesful telemarketing campaign

The least succesful telemarketing campaign was run by the charity Bathrooms for Bitches, a charity supporting dogs abandoned due to incontinence. After 17 unsuccessful mail and telephone campaigns, in 2003 they brought on the 'Performing Arts-based fundraising team' of Miller and Barnes.

Speaking later in Marketing Bugle in July 2006, Matthew Miller of Miller and Barnes said,

"Our scheme involved the callers telephoning potential supporters, and howling down the phone at them, like an incontinent bitch. We spent weeks perfecting the pitch and timbre of incontinent bitches of various breeds, and the campaign raised 213 complaints, 19 criminal charges and 44 civil cases."

Staff at Miller & Barnes, pictured during the Bathrooms For Bitches campaign. Staff had to be trained specially to ensure that their howling did not exceed 100decibels. Jermaine Beckwithe, one of their callers, remembered, "Some days you would get home and all you could hear was the howling and whining." Picture provided by HowardLake.

©2010 James Mathurin

Largest kitchen and toilet paper roll sculpture

The largest sculpture made out of kitchen and toilet paper rolls was a 1:1 scale model of Egypt’s Great Pyramid, constructed in Valencia, Spain by Hercules Boroquez in May 1996. He sent out a Press Release saying, “After my scale model of the Louvre, made of novelty Easter wrapping paper, complete with Mona Lisa was destroyed in the Madrid monsoon of ’89, I have laboured to prove that the elements shall not hold sway over my artistic vision!” The structure stood until late November, when mist caused the paper rolls to inflate, and eventually collapse under their own weight.

Boroquez, pictured preparing for the 1997 Spanish Exposition, where he talked about the experience of losing his Pyramid sculpture, and announced his decision to embark on a five-year project consisting of watercolours of paving stones. Photo by Bengt Nyman.

©2009 James Mathurin

Worst ever plot device

The worst ever plot device was in the Antiguan Television Soap Opera Saint Francis Of Assisi Hospital. On an episode broadcast on Tuesday 17th January 1995, the character Dr. Joyce Fenetre was put into a coma when she was hit on the head by a wheelbarrow, which had fallen from an overhead hot-air balloon, piloted by her amnesiac twin’s cloned illegitimate daughter Nicole Shanchioux, who was trying to escape the country as she had been targeted by the leader of the town’s Chamber of Commerce, Percy Fillibacher, who was secretly a worshipper of an ancient Mayan sacrificial cult.

A last-minute plot rewrite made the hot-air balloon became necessary, as the town’s port had been closed due an infestation of rabid cockroaches (instigated by the villainous Fillibacher), and the airport had been closed when it turned out that it had been left to the unborn son of the town’s heroic fire chief-turned-baker, Peter Brankillie, by the last surviving member of a secret tribe of Caribs who owned the land it was built on, and who had lived on the island, but had been nearly wiped out by the villainous upholstery magnate Françoise McCady, so that he could build a Cushion factory on the land they lived on, until Peter exposed his plot, at the cost of his job, as he had been falsely implicated in the scheme by McCady’s fitness instructor, Teri Bastille, who was also the surrogate mother of his child. Without a way to get Nicole off the island, the writers arranged for millionaire and one-time American presidential candidate Ross Perot to make a cameo appearance on the show, so that he could pilot the hot-air balloon onto the beach, on the premise that he was travelling by balloon to his holiday home on the Falklands Islands.

On the show, Perot set the balloon down on the grounds of the Kentucky Hotel Antigua as he had run out of ballast in a freak Seagull-related incident. As his new supply of sand was brought to the balloon in a wheelbarrow carried by the Hotel’s one-eared handyman, Micah Memmette, Nicole ran past him and hijacked the balloon as her only means of escape.

While this was happening, a screw in the hotel’s boiler room, which had been knocked loose several months previously in a fight between Peter and the hotel’s concierge, Patty Cheveux, came loose, causing an underground gas-pipe explosion, which catapulted the wheelbarrow into the hot-air balloon just after Nicole had set off. Once Nicole had got the sand out of the wheelbarrow, she pushed it over the side, not realising that it was destined to fall on her amnesiac biological mother’s twin sister.

The Antiguan Radio Times reviewed the episode, saying, “We know the creators have wanted Joyce in a coma for months now, but this method was ridiculous. Mister Perot’s cameo was a welcome surprise, but Micah’s actions were completely out of character for a former Green Beret, and telling the whole story in a dream-scene flashback is an insult to anyone who has been watching the show for more than 5 weeks.” The reviewer gave the episode 2 stars out of a possible 5.

Ross Perot's hot air balloon makes it grand entrance on Saint Francis Of Assisi Hospital. Because of the producers of the show failing to properly notify the authorities, this resulted in the Antiguan Air Force being scrambled, and a state of war existing between the United States of America and Antigua for 23 minutes. Picture by ericlbc.

©2009 James Mathurin

Highest number of accents in a minute

The highest number of accents used in a minute was 58, and was achieved by Adrian Wilnjes of Eindhoven, Holland. Wilnjes, who suffers from Multiple Personality Disorder, went through 58 distinct accents when he called into Holland’s leading radio talent show (whose title roughly translates as Show Us Your Mill-Master’s T-Bone Steak!), on 31^st July 2004. He later told his therapist, “Although I have over 60 personalities inside me, only 2 of them were involved in the telephone call. You see, they’re both amateur impressionists, and were competing against each other.” Wilnjes said that setting a new record was a consolation, as, “Neither of them are very funny.”

Ruud Ditvenhooy, host of Show Us Your Mill-Master’s T-Bone Steak! remembers Wilnjes as, "One of the most electrifying acts it has ever been my privelege to witness with my own ears. He could have gone all the way if not for the... unpleasantness that happened." Details of the 'unpleasantness' have been sealed by Dutch courts until 2015. Photo by YuvalH.

©2009 James Mathurin

Worst ever theme party

The worst ever theme party was thrown in 1996 by the Kwik Stop Service Station Corporation. Their Christmas party that year was a “normal day at work” party. When the staff had finished working they were taken, by coach, to another Kwik Stop Service Station, which was closed for the evening (for fumigation due to start the next day, because of an infestation of Earwigs), where they waited, in uniform, behind counters and tills, serving the management for 4 hours, with a 15 minute “themed lunch break window”, in which they could sit in the unventilated staff room, where the coffee machine was set to ‘free vend’. The vending machine in question had run out of Bovril. Although staff were told they could be fired if they did not return to their till on time, or if they left early, they were told they would not be paid. “Who would seriously expect us to pay our staff to attend their own party?” asked the regional manager, Phillip Strubb. The company was able to claim a tax rebate on the cost of the evening by claiming it as “business expenses”.

The 'Chill-out room' at the Kwik Stop theme party. Photo by moriza.

©2009 James Mathurin

Smallest office chair

The world’s smallest office chair was constructed by Gerte Hagemund, of Dortmund, Germany in 1977. It had a height of 4.8 centimetres, and Hagemund claims that it is the only remaining part of a complete ‘ergonomically designed’ office equipment set. “I made it for the fairies that I watch at the bottom of the garden,” she explained in an interview. “I have watched them since I was a little child, but as I grew older I noticed how bad their posture was. I don’t know if they ever actually do any office work, or whether they cavort all day long, but I felt I should do what I could to help.” Asked where the rest of the furniture was, she answered, “Well, they took it didn’t they? That’s the only thing that makes sense. I hope it has helped, as they completely ignored the little pamphlets I designed for them.”

Gerte [centre], pictured in 1982, with her mother and agent, and 3 items of office furniture (pictured on the table, but not visible due to the low resolution of the image, they include a chair, lamp and filing cabinet). Picture from the archive administered by anslatadams.

©2009 James Mathurin

The longest legal debate

The single longest legal debate took place in the Portugese Assembleia da República, when Luis Rotundo finally conceded defeat in his campaign to have 15 of the streets of Lisbon named after different animal kingdoms. "It all started with my vision to have an 'Alameda platyhelminthes'," Rotundo told journalists after the debate eventually ended, "And it saddens me that now the majesty of the natural world will not be commemorated in the form of Rua Vetulicolia, Estrada Brachiopoda, Caminho Ctenophora or Rua Nematomorpha." After the debate had lasted from 12th June 2002 until 24th September 2005, Rotundo vowed to plow his political efforts into the field of education and healthcare. He has since left politics to become a Carmelite monk.

The Lisbon street that would have become Estrda Xenoturbellida under the proposed 'Plano Rotundo', pictured by Allie_Caulfield.

©2009 James Mathurin