Britain’s Got Talent? Well, let me tell you – you ain’t heard the half of it…

Yesterday, I went to see my chum, the professional farteur Mr Methane, being filmed in the basement bedroom of a hotel near Primrose Hill in London – for a TV show which, alas, I am not allowed to describe until late next month at the earliest.

Apparently the series gets around 20 million viewers worldwide – more than the almost 14 million hits his Britain’s Got Talent clip currently has on YouTube.

While sitting around during the filming, I did have a chance to meet for the first time Paul ‘Burper King’ Hunn, the man who holds the record for the loudest burp in the world.

These two great audio entertainment legends had not met in the flesh until yesterday, so it was a historic day in bodily function circles. I felt privileged to be there.

Paul Hunn has held his distinguished Guinness Book of Records title since 2000 and still does but, he tells me, he is not in this year’s printed book because Guinness do not print every record every year – something which I had not realised.

How strange, I thought.

But the logic, it seems, is that if they printed every record every year then, with some records standing unchallenged over long periods, the book might seem too ‘samey’ every year. So not every record is printed every year.

Paul’s friend Steve Taylor holds the record for having the world’s longest tongue but, this year, he tells me, the Guinness Book of Records only includes the girl with the longest tongue.

According to The People newspaper in 2007, Steve Taylor can “fit five ring doughnuts on his monster. And he is only millimetres away from licking his own elbow – a feat always thought impossible.”

The full abilities of the girl with the longest tongue in the world remain strangely unreported.

I felt a slight tremble of trauma when Paul, the Burper King, mentioned the Guinness Book of Records to me, as I am still recovering from the emotional turmoil of them rejecting spaghetti juggling as a legitimate activity for their records during Malcolm Hardee Week at his year’s Edinburgh Fringe.

At the time, I felt spurned and strangely soiled.

They said spaghetti-juggling was “a little too specialised”.

Now, having recovered a little from the worst of my grief, I feel they simply did not show fitting respect to the sense of adventure and exploration of the unknown which made Britain great.

After leaving the hotel yesterday, with the sounds of Mr Methane and the Burper King still ringing in my ears, wistful memories came into my mind of booking Adrian ‘Nosey’ Wigley, a man from the West Midlands who could play the tune Spanish Eyes on an electric organ with only his nose.

Well, rumour had it that his nose was not the only one of his bodily protuberances with which he could play the electric organ, but modesty and a presumed inability to actually screen anything else on national TV meant I questioned him no further on his other physical abilities.

Sometimes, in the lengthening twilight of my years, I think fondly of Adrian ‘Nosey’ Wigley and sigh a sigh of contentment that, after booking him on The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross, my life has perhaps not been totally in vain.

Steve From Up North is introduced to someone famous by Malcolm Hardee

The late comedian Malcolm Hardee has been called the greatest influence on British comedy in the last 25 years. He knew everybody.

His friend Steve Taylor looked at the 95 photos of Malcolm’s infamous Tunnel Palladium club mentioned in my blog of a couple of days ago – and the references to Johnny Edgecombe, the man who triggered the Profumo sex scandal which brought down the Conservative government in 1964 – and it reminded Steve of one occasion in the 1980s when Malcolm Hardee introduced him to someone else who was very famous…

“At the time,” Steve tells me, “I was running my Laughingas comedy clubs (which I started with Phil Cool) in various Lancashire venues and I used to visit London often looking for new acts.

“I had been told about Malcolm’s club The Tunnel by Jasper Carrott‘s manager. I just introduced myself to Malcolm and tried to sell him Phil Cool, who was on the verge of the big time. Phil came down with me the next week and soon after that played The Tunnel and stormed it.

“After that, I often stayed with Malcolm and his partner Pippa and was rewarded with the honour of lending him money and cooking. With limited facilities it was usually a roast dinner and, of course, Malcolm being Malcolm, he often managed to get a lot of it down the front of his shirt and jacket.

“On this particular visit, for some unknowable reason, Malcolm felt obliged to treat me like a real tourist.

“On my previous visit, I had been roped-in to drive the van and play Wizo’s part in a Greatest Show on Legs tour. We did Salford University, Theatr Hafren in Wales, the Royal College of Egham and a couple more. No comedy clubs, just theatres and the Uni. I did most of the Greatest Show on Legs routines but sadly not the naked balloon dance. I was obviously far too pretty. The time before that, I had helped Malcolm move house.

“But this time, for some reason, he decided I was a tourist.

“So Malcolm says OK, Steve from Up North, what do you fancy doing today?

“I suggested we could go into town and maybe he could introduce me to some of his famous showbiz mates.

“He said that we would sail into the centre of London in his boat.

“This was always a risky proposition, but we got there safely and moored somewhere near Waterloo. (The return trip took hours as the tide was stronger than the motor on the boat.)

“Anyway, I found myself outside Waterloo station and Malcolm took me over to a guy selling flowers and introduced me to him with the words: Oy Oy, This is Steve from Up North.

“Pleased to meet you, the guy says and we leave.

“There you are, says Malcolm as we walk on, That was Buster Edwards, the Great Train Robber… If you want, I can introduce you to a bloke who knows Charlie Kray….. and there was me thinking we might have been having dinner in Langan’s with Michael Caine!

“Did Malcolm react to this anti-climax? Of course not.

“Every minute in Malcolm’s company was quirky.