Clip-a-di-clopingly awesome

thegirlinthecafe London

You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're banging them together

There were 4382 5567 silly people (including me) who registered and met up to participate in this event.
Awesome. Absolutely awesome.

(Update: pictures added)

Trafalgar Square was completely filled with people with coconuts.

BFI showed some black and white comedy on the big screen while we were waiting for the whole thing to start. It was some well chosen comedy with a lot of horses. Every time a horse was in sight the whole square started coconuting which was hilarious.

There were knights with coconuts, posh gentlemen in sharp suits with coconuts, children with coconuts, tourists with coconuts, geeks with coconuts, Monty Pythons addicts with coconuts, Englishmen, Scots, Dutch, Italians, Indians, Chinese people with coconuts.

They showed clips of Michael Palin with the instruction video of the Ministry of Food (not sure this was the title …), where he explains how to prepare your coconut and how to bang them together.

If that wasn’t clear enough, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam were there live on stage to instruct us how to coconut!

The cast of the Spamalot musical was there to warm up us, and the conducter of the Spamalot orchestra was conducting us through the world record attempt.

The actual attempt was done on “Always look on the bright side of life”. We sung the lyrics, and clip-a-di-clopped our coconuts on the whistling parts of the song.

Hearing 5567 people singing that particular song, in the middle of London, accompanying it with coconuts – it’s one of the most beautiful and funniest things I have ever been to.

Oh, and we beat New York (they had the old record with a pathetically 1785 people) by a mile!

Some (pocket camera) pictures:



20 thoughts to “Clip-a-di-clopingly awesome”

  4. So you have been horsing around again.
    Absolutely cocoNUTS!
    Must have been a good day for the coconut business.
    Where did you get yours from?

  5. They were handing them out for free! That was probably also the only way to get this many people clip clopping with coconuts. And it’s of course also a big media stunt as it was heavily sponsored by the Spamalot musical.

  9. @Pedro – and proud to be one! :-)

    @Edwinek – I’ll get back on that, there was a piece paper attached to the coconuts which I have at home. I think it said where they came from. But my guess is that they are sold as a byproduct by a coconut factory (where they take out the coco from the nuts for Bounty’s and the like).

  10. Your Coconut Event will be on television on CNN’s noon “Your World Today”, the international news, which I’m watching right now!

    Wave, Ingrid, wave!

  11. Woah, we got 5567? We so rock. I have been demonstrating the trot/canter/gallop/jump combo to people in the office all day. They did not get tired of it. Not in my head anyways.

    I can imagine some people last night thought to themselves “No, on second thought, let’s not go to Trafalgar Square. It is a silly place.” And they were gloriously right.

  15. It was in teh Guardian this morning, then a bit of footage on newsround. I was scanning it thinking “Is that her?” :)

  16. chuckles, thats me in the pictures with the blue and red hat and the pink and black glove \o/ what an awesome day like, gotta say I’ve never been to anything like that before :D

  18. @Michele – I waved! Did you see me? :-)

    @Paul – we are worldrecord holders now, you know. I am going to put that on my CV. And thanks for mentioning the trot/canter/gallop words, I wanted to write them into this post but couldn’t remember them! The jump cracked me up, that was awesome.

    @looby: yes that was me :)

    @Benny – you’re a world record holder too!

    @Edwinek – that was just my guess, no idea where they got them.

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