Festival Place shopping centre in Basingstoke, UK, was the venue for two record attempts on Friday, 10 July 2009.
The records being attempted were, the most potatoes peeled in one hour by a team of five and the most ice cream eaten in 30 seconds.
The first record attempted was that for most potatoes peeled in one hour by a team of five, which took place at 3 p.m. The two teams consisted of five colleagues from the Marks & Spencer’s outlet and five members of the Debenhams store.
Both teams were clearly very excited to be taking part in the challenge, and didn’t want to let their fellow team members down in front of the onlooking crowd, which was growing by the minute.
As the record got underway both teams were trying their best to make sure every potato was fully peeled to an institutional cooking standard.
At the end of the hour, Guinness World Records™ Adjudicator Carl had only discounted a handful of each team’s potatoes, which showed the care everyone was putting into making sure they were peeling correctly.
Finally the time was up and both teams downed their potato peelers. Next came the weigh-in of the successfully peeled potatoes; the two teams looked on in anticipation.
The previous record, set in 1992, was an incredible 482.8 kg (1,064 lb 6 oz). Both teams knew they had a big task on their hands to break this record.
The Debenhams team had a final weight of 49 kg (108 lb) and the M&S team finished with 64 kg (141 lb). Although neither team had broken the record, the M&S team had won the battle of the heavyweight stores in the Festival Place shopping store. Both teams had great fun – along with the crowd that had gathered to watch them.
The second record attempt of the day was for the most ice cream eaten in 30 seconds, and two people were taking part in the challenge: Dave Hudson and Tejwant Bajwa.
Both participants made sure they didn’t eat too much during the course of the day, to ensure they had a good chance of beating the current record – 382 g (13.5 oz) – which had been set in the USA in 2006.
The par of contestants got off to a good start. The cold ice cream soon became too much for the two challengers, however, and they managed just 111 g, or 3.9 oz (Dave) and 69 g, or 2.4 oz (Tejwant). Both had clearly given it their bes shot, though, which clearly pleased the crowds that had built up to watch the second Guinness World Records
challenge of the day.
11 July 2009
