Largest game of Chinese whispers
You wouldn’t normally expect a football player to urge a crowd at a football stadium to be quiet, but this was no normal day at Arsenal Football Club’s Emirates Stadium.
Over 1,500 children aged 7- 11 from across the United Kingdom had been invited by BI Worldwide Ltd. to take part in the Largest game of Chinese whispers in an attempt to beat
the record of 1,083 participants set in 2006. The rules were simple in theory; each child had to whisper the sentence to the child on their right who passed it on in turn,
weaving from row to row until the last child whispered it to the person who started. At no point were the participants allowed to talk except for when they passed on the whisper.
This was the hardest rule as the primary school children had to remain quiet for 2 hours and 4 minutes, the time it took for the whisper to go round the 1,330 children who showed
up on the day. To keep them occupied the children were entertained by former England international John Salako, children’s entertainer Sean Clarke and break dancing group Nemesis.
The original sentence was “Together we can make a world of difference” but once this was passed on 1,330 times it had morphed to “We’re going to break a world record” and finished as an excited “Haaaa!”.
Once the whisper had finished it was up to Guinness World Records adjudicators, Matt Boulton and Ralph Hannah, to decide if all the guidelines had been followed correctly. Thanks to the tremendous organisational
efforts of BI Worldwide Ltd. and all the teachers, the entertainers and of course the fantastic concentration shown by the children themselves, the Guinness World Records adjudicators were more than satisfied that
the rules had been adhered to. When the announcement was made the crowd burst into life and for the first time in 2 hours the Emirates was filled with children’s voices as they congratulated themselves and each other.
The Guinness World Records certificate was gratefully accepted by Richard Bandell, Managing Director of BI Worldwide Ltd., who thanked the children for making this record possible. The event was a double success
as BI in conjunction with Arsenal Football Club raised £100,000 for children’s charities TreeHouse and Save the Children.
14 July 2008