For many British gen Xers, BBC Record Breakers was a staple of their childhoods in the 1970s and 80s. Following the news the show is to be rebooted after 24 years off air, people have shared their recollections of its featured world record attempts, beloved and controversial presenters and theme song, Dedication.
Many of those who responded to the Guardian’s callout warmly remembered Roy Castle, one of the original presenters, as an all-round showbiz trouper. Castle, an accomplished trumpeter who performed Dedication at the end of each episode, broke nine world records himself and worked on the show until just months before his death from lung cancer in 1994.
“Roy Castle brought joy to proceedings – I loved his warm and witty everyman persona,” said Andrew Brooke, 56, a retired teacher from Wells in Somerset. “Dedication must rank as one of the finest theme tunes in history, particularly as he sang and played a trumpet solo live each week. The lyrics were tweaked to fit the featured records attempts. I would occasionally sing them to inspire my pupils: ‘If you want to be the best, if you want to beat the rest, dedication’s what you need.’ Though there was usually no response at all from the children!”
Brooke was one of many respondents who particularly enjoyed the attempts to break records live on the show. One that has stuck in his memory involved a barber trying to complete the most number of shaves in a minute: “He used a cut-throat razor on these men with five o’clock shadows and cut someone’s face in the process.”
Sarah Shepley, 60, a retired scientist from Devon, recalled meeting Castle when she took part in two record attempts on the show in 1977. Then aged about 12, her church youth club in Ealing, west London, was invited to BBC White City to be part of a big tap dance ensemble in the courtyard. “We then joined a huge group of kids peeling onions. They gave us plastic knives for it which were useless. It was a hoot. Roy Castle sang ‘Don’t cry for me onion peeler’. Don’t Cry for Me Argentina was a No 1 hit that year. He was just a nice bloke, hilarious, a big kid.”
A few people said the show inspired them to attempt to break records. Among them was Philip Reader, 56, from London, who back in his infant school in Brentwood in Essex roped in his best friend to see how far they could hop on one leg. He wrote to the programme and was delighted to receive a signed response from Castle, along with a “showbizzy” autographed photo. But he was disappointed to hear from the presenter that there was no recognised category for his record attempt.
Reader, who works for Waitrose, said the show encouraged him to pursue his passion for music to this day. “It taught me about following your own ideas and not being afraid to stand out from the crowd,” he added. “‘Dedication’s what you need’ is the advice and encouragement that I have carried throughout my life.”
Another callout respondent had his hopes of breaking a record dashed by his parents’ revelations about a purportedly long-lived pet. Peter Allan, 60, a self-employed management consultant from East Renfrewshire, Scotland, said: “It was thanks to Record Breakers that I discovered my hamster had died.”
Allan explained: “I had read that the average life expectancy of a hamster was 18 to 24 months. My 10-year-old self was so excited because my hamster ‘Jeemy’ was seven years old! I was busy composing a letter to Roy hoping Jeemy would become a record breaker when my dad informed me that Jeemy was actually Jeemy IV. Every time Jeemy died he was surreptitiously replaced. I was upset – not at the sad demise of my pets but at the wasted time and effort of letter writing!”
Many readers said their childhood memories of the show have subsequently been tainted by learning about the far-right politics of the two other original presenters, twins Norris McWhirter and Ross McWhirter.
The Guinness World Records founders astounded many viewers with their recall of record-breaking facts and figures. But the brothers also co-founded the rightwing National Association for Freedom (Naff), later the Freedom Association, which campaigned against sporting sanctions imposed on apartheid-era South Africa.
Ross McWhirter, who was assassinated by an IRA gunman in 1975, also advocated restrictions on the freedom of the Irish community in Britain, including compulsory registration with the police. Andrew Brooke said: “As my family is from Belfast, I guess that would have included us.”
“As a child, Norris McWhirter just seemed to be a kindly old and eccentric uncle, wheeled out to amaze us with his remarkable memory,” Brooke added. “I also remember feeling very sorry for him after Ross was murdered.
“As I grew older and became more politically aware, I developed a severe aversion to Norris, after finding out that he ran a nasty rightwing thinktank. I couldn’t understand how the BBC would employ someone with such extreme views. Then again, vetting children’s TV presenters wasn’t exactly the BBC’s forte back then.”
Other readers’ recollections of later series, after Norris McWhirter had left the show in 1985, were not tarnished by the subsequent presenters’ political leanings. Sue Wilde-Greer, 56, from Spain, recalled how her father, Mike, then a sales director for a window-cleaning kit company, was invited on the show in 1995 to judge an attempt to break the fastest window-cleaning record. “He loved being on the show,” she said. “He wore his best suit and we all sat down as a family to watch it.”
The record-breaker Terry “Turbo” Burrows said his time on the show, then hosted by the former Bucks Fizz singer Cheryl Baker and the former Olympic and Commonwealth medal-winning athlete Kriss Akabusi was “truly amazing”. He went on to break his window-cleaning record a further nine times, bringing the record time down to 9.14 seconds.
