UK Launch part one

Time for another crazy week as the book is launched in the UK, following successful launches in Australia and New Zealand recently. There will be more details of what went on 'down under' in the news section of the website in the coming weeks. I've also bee doing radio interviews around the world, especially in Dubai where there seems to be a lot of interest this year.

The book has a special place in British people's hearts and extolls many of the best British virtues. For example, I was on TV again last week - they'll get sick of me soon - with Giles Brandreth on BBC TV's One show. Giles had a huge teddy bear collection, though not as big as Jackie Miley of the USA, who had 5,029 different teddy bears, as of 1 May this year.

Giles was selling his collection off for charity and it brought up the very British obsession of collecting items. We were on with Ann Atkins, the largest collector of gnomes and pixies (2,302 unduplicated items) and Tim Leigh (100 unduplicated salt and pepper sachets). It's very much in the tradition of the UK for explorers to go out and document the world in details, much as we do here in GWR.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg! This week we have lots of record breakers coming over to our HQ including, among others, Cathie Jung (who has the smallest waist - it's smaller than my neck!), Leslie Tipton (a contortionist who can fit into a suitcase - we were thinking of loading her on to a carousel in an airport in London but don't I think that they'd let us) and Ken Lee, who does some very cool things with a samurai sword.

We'll be out and about in the GWRMobile (honk if you see us) and Edd China will be driving around in another one of his contraptions - he has the record for the fastest office, fastest furniture and largest shopping trolley/cart. See if you can spot what he's been building this time.

Once the madness and the interview glut is over I'll let you know what stories come out of this cornucopia of record breaking...