Dedication, dedication, dedication that's what you need to be a record breaker and scores of people in Nottingham have it in bucket loads to smash their way into the record books. The official Guinness World Records features 40,000 record-breaking facts and achievements - and a number have been set right here.
Along with medical breakthroughs, sporting achievements and huge gatherings there's some pretty bizarre feats involving rubber rings and dressing up as Nottingham's legendary outlaw Robin Hood.
Largest trifle
Hospitality students at Clarendon College of Further Education (now part of Nottingham College) set mouths watering with the biggest trifle ever, weighing 3.13 tonnes. That's an awful lot of jelly, custard and cream. The feat took place at Forest Recreation Ground, Nottingham, in September 1990.
Later at 1.3 tonnes a record-breaking lemon meringue pie, also made by Clarendon students in 1998, was a mere snack by comparison. Hundreds of folk later tucked in to the creation, which took four days to make using cement mixers and nylon shovels to turn the huge mixture.
Nottingham's then Lord Mayor Coun Joyce Donn and Sheriff of Nottingham Coun Chris Gibson took the taste test and gave the dessert a resounding thumbs-up.
Read more: Nottinghamshire Pub of the Year: stunning place to eat and drink
Greatest distance tyre flipping in 24 hours
Daniel Garner trained for nine months for his fund-raising feat which went on to set a world record in June 2020. He managed to flip a type a whopping 11.21km (6.96 miles) over 24 hours to raise money to help cancer patients through Nottingham Hospitals Charity.
Most triplets in one school
Luckily for teachers the triplets weren't identical or that could have been very challenging. Kirkby Centre School in Ashfield, set the record for five sets of triplets in the school year September 1998 to July 1999. The triplets were Katie, Emma and Sarah Wilson and Luke, Ashley and Samantha Twells in Year Seven; Paul, John and Christopher Smith, and Stephen, Leanne and Carina Cantrill in Year Ten, and Stuart, David and Adam Nicholson in the Upper Sixth.
Largest stack of drinks mats flipped and caught
We've all idlily flipped a couple of beer mats in the pub but Mat Hand, a former Nottingham Trent University student, turned it into a world record when he flipped and caught a pile of 112 beermats in May 2001 at Waterstone's Bookshop. It took him more than four hours and 129 attempts to break the previous record of 111.
It's not Mat's only record. He devoured 211 individual cold peas in three minutes using a cocktail stick and played in the longest table tennis rally, which lasted more than five hours.
Biggest practical science lesson
A total of 292 Nottingham students smashed a record set just months earlier by 276 students in Birmingham. During GameCity in October 2012 the pupils took part in a mass science lesson, led by local scientist Natasha Neale, in Old Market Square.
They created slime with a mixture of PVA glue, borax and food colouring and also built and set off pop rockets for the two hands-on experiments they were required to perform under the rules.
Students were allowed to work in teams of five during the 30-minute lesson and had to submit a written report. The successful attempt was greeted with a roar of cheers once confirmed by the adjudicator.
Fastest time to complete survival mode on Star Wars: Battlefront without using blasters by a team of two
Father and daughter Tim and Keren Young, of Netherfield, broke the record at the now closed National Videogame Arcade in Hockley in June 2018 - a feat they'd been training for since the previous September. More than a minute faster than the existing record, they took 9 minutes 18 seconds.
Tim said: "When we were playing we had a couple of happy accidents which made us realise how we could do it faster. It’s all about the position you get into. We almost got out of position at one point, but we managed to get back on track.”
Busiest telephone exchange
Beeston has a long history within the telecommunications manufacturing industry. In June 1989 workers at GPT (later GEC Plessey Telecommunications and Siemens) set a Guinness World Record for a record number of calls. The company's System X telephone exchange dealt with 1,558,000 calls in an hour through one exchange at Beeston.
Most aerial cartwheels on a balance beam
Nottingham-born Olympic gymnast Becky Downie managed 17 aerial cartwheels in front of TV cameras on CBBC's Officially Amazing programme in October 2017. Two years later Becky, of Gedling, went on to scoop a silver medal at the World Gymnastics Championships in Stuttgart after putting in the performance of a lifetime on the uneven bars.
Most watched video on Twitch
A clip of a man scared out of his wits by his young daughter made it into the record books in July 2017 as the most watched video on Twitch, a live-streaming platform for gamers. Tom Wheldon, of Nottingham, was playing the creepy Outlast 2 when his 22-month-old toddler Jessica inadvertently made him jump.
Tom, aka JurassicJunkie, was wearing headphones when she went into his office to take him a drink. He told Guinness World Records: "I had no clue that she had entered the room and at the exact same moment she did, a crow flew out at me in the game and I jumped.
"While taking my eyes off the screen for a split second I noticed a small figure beside me and I screamed for my life only to find out it was my daughter bringing me a cool drink!” The clip had been viewed 3,022,461 times on the video platform. Watch it at 'streamer daughter walks in on him while playing a scary game' on YouTube.
Least invasive cochlear implant surgery
Some of the records, although an achievement for the individual, don't change the world. However, Nottingham professor Gerry O'Donoghue transformed the lives of young deaf children by pioneering a new minimally-invasive form of surgery to perform cochlear implants in children at the Queen's Medical Centre.
He was declared a record breaker in 2000. Rather than having to shave the patient's head and cut a long incision into the skin of the skull, a 3cm incision behind the ear allowed the implant to be inserted into the bony well drilled in the skull. The new method meant less scarring, reduced risk of infection and less trauma.
Most passes through a rubber ring
One of the more bizarre records set by pupils at Hempshill Hall School, in Bulwell, was for the most passes through an inflatable rubber ring. Pupils Luke Franks, Sam Homewood, Arielle Free and London Hughes set the record in October 2017 on the television programme CITV Scrambled!
The 25-strong team achieved 44 in three minutes. The same agile youngsters smashed a second record for the most limbos with a colossal 142.
Greatest height range played by a stuntman
Crashing cars and jumping off cliffs is all in a death-defying day's work for Riky Ash, who hails from The Meadows. He set a world record in 1998 for the greatest height range of 34 inches played by a stuntman.
Riky, who is 5ft 3in himself, has doubled up for child actors and at the other extreme stood in for 6ft 4in actor Duncan Preston in the comedy-drama Love and Marriage, bouncing on a trampoline and flying over a hedge.
Most runs in a men's ICC Cricket World Cup match
The record happened at Trent Bridge in Nottingham in a match between Australia and Bangladesh when the two sides combined for an aggregate total of 714 for 13 in a group stage match of the 2019 World Cup. Australia made it through to the final but lost out to South Africa by ten runs.
The largest collection of tea towels
No one in the world has more tea towels than Nottingham's Barbara Howard who boasts an incredible 1,457 (and probably owns even more by now) since taking the record in November 2021.
Barbara, who is the curator of a virtual tea towel museum online, began her collection more than 50 years ago but it was only after retiring in 2015 that she began to categorise them and start writing a blog, telling the story behind each tea towel.
Her first tea towel, of the Welsh language, was bought while a student at Swansea University in Wales - and as they say, the rest is history. The haul is stored on hangers in a large built-in wardrobe.
The largest gathering of people dressed as Robin Hood
Some records could only happen in Nottingham. It was a sea of greenery as 1,215 members of the Camping and Caravanning Club donned tunics and bycockets (the pointy cap) at a gathering at Newark Showground in August 2011.
A later attempt in 2018 to beat the record - this time at Wollaton Park - fell just shy of the record with organisers blaming it on the heat.
Highest odds, accumulator bet, horses
The highest odds for an accumulator bet were 3,072,887 to 1 by an unnamed woman from Nottingham in May 1995. For a 5p accumulator on five horses which won at odds of 66-1, 20-1, 20-1, 12-1 and 7-1, she won £153,644.40 for the accumulator and £208,098,79 in total, paid by Ladbrokes.
Heaviest broad bean
Green-fingered Joe Atherton, of Mansfield, is a multiple world record holder for his giant vegetables, including the longest parsnip, carrot and leek, the latter measuring 4ft 5.5in or 136cms. His latest accolade was for the heaviest broad bean pod, which tipped the sales at 106g (3.74oz).
The super-sized entry was verified at the CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championships, held at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern, Worcestershire, in September last year.
Oldest female solo parachute jump
Dilys Price was a formidable woman. In 2003, Dilys, a senior lecturer in Wales, was awarded an OBE for her work with people with special needs and in 2017 she was singled out for special recognition at the Daily Mirror's Pride of Britain Awards.
She demonstrated age is not a barrier to breaking a record as proved when she did a solo parachute jump at Langar Airfield in April 2013. The plucky pensioner, born in 1932, was 80 years and 315 days at the time.
Most Eskimo rolls
Nottingham's Helen Barnes has celebrated three records for Eskimo rolls in a kayak including the fastest time for 100 rolls without a paddle (hand rolling). It took Helen 3 minutes 46.097 seconds at the David Lloyd Club in Nottingham in June 2010.
She smashed her own record for the fastest time to do 100 Eskimo rolls with a paddle, in August 2000 on BBC TV's Linford's Record Breakers, slicing seconds off the time, taking 3 minutes 42.16 seconds.
