*Update* May 8th. Having been reached out to by both Music Venue Trust and Crywank, and in the interest of keeping this article as fair and balanced as possible, I would like to add the following clarifications from MVT: The GPS tracker and videoing every show rule they added were so that the record could be verified by Guinness after the fact. To do it in person, Guinness wanted over £10,000. Strangely, Crywank took no issue with the content of the article itself. They just asked me to remove some jokes made at their expense and reword some parts of the article.
At what point does a ‘practical joke’ get out of hand?
On April 7th this year, Russ Cook became the first person to run the ‘entire length of Africa’ running from the continent’s most southern point in South Africa to its most northern in Tunisia. The week before he was due to finish his attempt, the ‘World Runners Association’ released a public statement disputing Cook’s claim in favour of their own runner and founder, Jesper Olsen, who also completed a lap of Africa in 2010. This led to some controversy in how the record should be defined owing to Olsen’s run ending in Egypt and Cook’s in Tunisia. However, the real controversy was the clear contempt the WRA had for Cook in not accepting or even entertaining the fact that his run was a different record entirely to their record. In the end, they backed off entirely upon learning that even they had been beaten in 1998 by Nicholas Bourne, and he had the Guinness Plaque to prove it.
Notably, Guinness have titled this record as ‘Fastest journey from Cape Town to Cairo on foot’ and not ‘First person to run the length of Africa’. They stated that this is because ‘there is no recognised standard for the route, distance or time taken’. One record they have issued a standard for however, is the record for the most gigs played in the most cities in 24 hours. First set by Jay-Z in 2006, the record has been beaten multiple times since and subsequently has become harder with every new record set. The rules for this record were defined as follows:
- – The cities must be 31 miles (50 km) or more apart.
- – At least half of the cities must have a population of at least 100,000.
- – All cities must have a population of more than 15,000.
- – The concerts must be played in a recognized venue with a capacity of at least 300 people.
- – The shows must be advertised and tickets must be available.
- – Each show must last at minimum 15 minutes.
These rules were established for attempts undertaken on the continental United States, where there are thousands of municipalities recognised as ‘cities’. Over 300 have a population of over 100,000, and one even contains only a single resident. Given the sheer number of recognised cities within the USA, it is clear why Guinness have set out a standard for this record. Realistically, the word ‘City’ in this context is arbitrary and intended to make the record sound more prestigious. Applied to a UK standard, 77 urban areas have a population of over 100,000. Only a handful of these are defined as cities. Many of them also comprise of multiple towns grouped together into one district. Realistically, the record requirements would undeniably have to be altered to a European standard to recognise large towns within the definition of city in relation to this specific record.
Regardless of whether or not Guinness has publicly released official European guidance to that effect, it almost certainly exists. How do I know this? Because Tom Grennan holds the record for the most gigs in the most ‘towns’ in 12 hours. Out of the 10 ‘towns’ he played, only 8 were recognised as such. Of the remaining 2, one is technically part of Bolton and the other is a village. All 10 have a population under 15,000, suggesting that 15,000 is where Guinness would consider a town as a city in a European context. The minimum distance required between shows also appears to have been around 30km. Now that I’ve outlined some context, let’s discuss the real story here:
Some people really don’t like Frank Turner
And that’s okay. I mean, I don’t really like Russ Cook’s political opinions, but I also didn’t try and protest them by flying to Tunisia on the last day of his run, beating him to the finish line, and then setting my own rules to make it official.
That is, however, what Crywank’s folk-punk anarchist turned practical joker lead singer Jay Clayton has done. Following Turner’s announcement of his record attempt, Clayton took to Twitter to jokingly suggest beating Turners record the day before he would set out to do it. Then the realisation sunk in that this was a real possibility. Clayton quickly set out to book multiple shows in multiple places, notably making a point of playing in places officially recognised as Cities under UK law as the key rule for their tour.
At first glance, I found this absolutely fucking hilarious and was even going to offer my flat blocks car park as a venue if the tour included the south. Despite having been a big fan of Frank Turner and still being a regular fan now, I also recognise that records are literally meant to be broken, even if you don’t own it for that long. He also made the mistake of announcing it early enough that someone could feasibly try to break it before him, and I figured if he really wanted it, he could easily do the tour again with more venues. I mean, Geoff Marshall set the Tube Challenge record twice to reclaim his title and that’s considerably more complicated.
When I started looking into the history of the record, however, I realised that Crywank would have to jump through multiple hoops to have it recognised and that their proposed itinerary may not qualify for the record. Noticing that Crywank had their Twitter DMs set to public, I figured at the very least I’d give them a heads up, the response I received was a clear indication that they had no interest in obtaining an official record, and just wanted the public to know they had done it.
To this, I thought fair enough. They don’t really care, and have also tweeted that it’s more of an attempt at a joke at Turners expense more than anything. I thought nothing more of either attempt until a few days ago when suddenly, to my surprise, my twitter timeline was full of tweets from Crywank, who was seemingly enthused by a statement the Music Venue Trust had released defining the rules of the record attempt.
Despite being previously informed that these rules existed and told that they should search them out, Crywank decided to utilise their twitter platform to call out Turner, the Music Venue Trust and apparently anyone else who comes up when you search Ed Balls Crywank on Twitter. Why? Because Crywank has determined that the MVT released these rules at the last minute specifically to undermine and invalidate their attempt, just like the World Runners Association did to Russ Cook. What the runners didn’t have on their side though was an actual standard set out by Guinness, which Turner and the MVT seemingly do have.
Under the standards released by the Music Venue Trust, at least 4 of the shows scheduled for Crywank’s attempt wouldn’t be valid, meaning they would fall short of the record Turner was due to set. I too would be quite miffed if they released these standards the day before I was due to go out on tour and they coincidentally took me just under the threshold required. But, that isn’t what has happened here. Sure, Music Venue Trust have thrown in some of their own rules, such as it needing to be a good quality gig and the use of a GPS tracker, but the rules which invalidate 4 of the Crywank shows are the rules originally established by Guinness. They were always publicly available for Crywank to read and understand in order to plan accordingly.
I didn’t envision myself writing this article, mainly because I thought it would die down, but Crywank are still tweeting about it multiple times a day despite it being a ‘joke’ and ‘I don’t need the record books to acknowledge it’. Therefore, I’d like to officially award Jay Clayton the Carling World Record™ for ‘Most tweets directly or indirectly referring to Frank Turner’s Guinness World Record since he announced his attempt on April 16th 2024’ which currently stands at.. actually I’m not fucking counting all of that, and would kindly request that you give up caring about this.
*Disclaimer: I haven’t written this in blind defence of Turner or as an attack on Clayton. This was written in defence of the Music Venue Trust. The significant level of public interest in this story has led to the court of social media attacking the reputation of the MVT despite both Clayton and Turner being supportive of the charity.