The Old Sergeant pub cooked £600 of meat in just over 29 hours.
A new Guinness World Record for the longest team barbecue marathon was smashed last weekend as staff at the Old Sergeant pub in Wandsworth grilled meat for 29 hours and one minute.
Owner Lee De Villiers and friend Simon Clarke cooked £600 of meat through Friday night and into the late hours of Saturday, all in aid of the Old Sergeant charity walk.
They were helped along the way by Wandsworth mayor Cllr Angela Graham, while the nearby fire and ambulance services ensured there was custom throughout the night.
“I looked online and saw that the Swiss held the record and thought that it should be in England,” Lee said.
“For the past eight years that we’ve been doing the walk, Simon and I have done 14-hour BBQ shifts. We thought, double it and we’ll break the World Record!”
Two film cameras, a pair of stopwatches and numerous volunteer witnesses were all required to meet Guinness World Record standards, as the Old Sergeant cooked up 150 lots of sausages, pork chops, pork rinds, burgers and chicken breasts.
Wearing t-shirts claiming ‘nou gaan ons braai’ (Afrikaans for ‘now we are going to fry’), South African Lee revealed that throughout his stint he was only allowed to leave the grill side for toilet breaks.
“We’ve had an army of helpers because I’m not even allowed to go to the fridge,” he said.
“Another South African just broke then single long-distance barbeque marathon in the United States, so I wanted to make it a double.”
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