Charlie's Account of the Event

Well a man called Kam Ma came into Sunderland Body Art shop in 2001, we did regular work on him e.g. Surface piercing around his neck and arms, ears etc and the odd tattoo. Kam asked me jokingly what the world record was for piercing in one continuous session, we contacted Guinness world records, they informed us that the record was 227 piercings by Greg Thompson from the USA. So I said to Kam, "IS THAT ALL, I’ll DO 500 THEN", and that was it.

We spent 5 months of preparation and planning looking into things like regulations, risk assessment, health issues, types of needles and BCR's, clamps, designs, where to do it, PR work etc. 26th May 2002 was the big day. We all gathered in the shop at 7.30am, everything was ready for the attempt all but the last minute paper work. Just to put you all in the picture the attempt was in the main piercing room upstairs in the shop at Sunderland Body Art, we had fixed up 2 camcorders above the room and had 2 TV’s down stairs in the main shop so people could watch. Upstairs we had Kam, myself, 4 judicators, 3 first aid people, John who prepared everything for me, Duncan did the running about and transfers, Jo who did the paperwork and looked after everyone, cameraman and video lady, plus the press and the BBC. We had planned to start at 9am, but we all had paper work to do for the attempt.

9.15 came and everything was ready, I picked up the clamps for the first time and I could not believe it, my hands were shaking, it’s the first time in a long time that’s happened. Anyway, off we went and the time started. Because I am right handed I started working from left to right (we had practiced this), the plan was to put 3 rows of 60 BCR’s on each forearm that would make 360 BCR’s but when I had finished the first row I could only get 50 in, so while we carried on Duncan designed something for Kam’s chest to make the numbers up, in the meantime we put 1 more row on each arm (that gave us 400 up to now). We put the design on Kam’s chest ready for later on in the day, we then worked on Kam’s biceps, we put 3 stripes on one arm 2 stripes on the other then dropped on to his chest to finish it off. We had put in 581 BCR’s so far, but then we ran out of BCR’s so we made the numbers up with 19 barbells which took over 1 hr to do. At 5.47pm I put the last ball on, and that was it. (A NEW WORLD RECORD FOR THE TIME BEING)

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