On Monday 2 July, 330 pupils and staff at Caterham School set a new world record for people dressed as mobile phones dancing for five consecutive minutes. The music chosen was by MC Hammer You can’t touch this.
The event was organised by the fifteen Sixth Form students who comprise the Charity Committee at the school, who wanted to create another way of raising funds. Therefore every entrant had to contribute £2. This will bring the total raised for charity this academic year to just over £50,000. Eighteen UK charities will benefit in addition to Lerang’wa School in Tanzania, Nagydobronyi Református Líceum in Ukraine and Kumbaradi School in India.
It will take a few weeks for the record to be confirmed by Guinness World Records. The students are very confident because the only similar World Record listed is for the world's largest gathering of people dressed as mobile phones, which involved 275 participants for an event organised by Open Mobile and Motorola in San Juan, Puerto Rico on 14 November 2007.
Assistant Headmaster David Clark said: ‘The committee had to put a lot of effort into this event because so many pupils were away from school on trips or tours. They promoted the event for several weeks to make sure that they had the numbers. Of course getting the 330 participants to rehearse properly prior to recording the five minutes was also quite a challenge. Some of the mobile phone designs were exceptional and covered the range from the latest smart phones to some very old styles. It was great fun and all the pupils deserve credit for making it an enjoyable event.’