The Guinness book of World Records is a marvelous tome, featuring as it does a whole host of human feats, both of endurance and of stoicism. Many of the records feature fantastic heroics by both sportsmen and ordinary people, pushing themselves to the limit and besting everyone else in their chosen field. What we like most though, as the general public, are the ridiculous records. How many people can you fit into a phonebox? How many pegs can you fit on your face? How many baked beans can you eat with a toothpick in the space of one minute?

How many people dressed as Smurfs can you gather in one place at one time?

This is the record the people of Komin, Croatia decided that they could beat. Research on the Internet revealed that they would only have to gather more than two-hundred and ninety Smurfs in one place to clinch the record. The press were notified, campaigns were launched and a date was set. When the time came, three-hundred and ninety-five Smurfs descended on Komin.

Nearly four-hundred men, women and children all painted blue from head to foot, wearing white trousers and floppy white hats gathered together for the record attempt. With over one-hundred more Smurfs than the current record, they were surely a shoe-in.

However, when they contacted Guinness to verify the record, they were informed that it had all been a waste of time. Last year, Warwick University students managed to amass four-hundred and fifty-one Smurfs, besting the Croatian effort by fifty-six.

A down-beat Croat spokesman said: “We could easily have got more Smurfs, but we thought that over a hundred more than the American record we found on the Internet would be enough”.

The moral of the story? Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet!

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