The Guinness Book of Records was a big thing in the 1970s. Every house had a copy. The book contained all manner of world records of length, height, speed, and so on, in all areas of the human and natural world.
The edition I grew up with was the 1971 edition. I’d marvel at the photos of the world’s tallest human (Robert Wadlow), the world’s fattest twins (the McCrarys, famously pictured riding side by side on mini bikes), and a giant earthworm from East Gippsland. I’d absorb the numbers and retain them with almost photographic accuracy. Bob Beamon’s 1968 long jump record, the height of the Sears Towers in Chicago, and, of course, Donald Bradman’s batting average.
There was something about world records that fascinated. In all of the world, in all of history, this man ran the fastest mile ever recorded. It was a book of heroes and inspired emulation.
With this in mind, my four siblings and I began recording our own feats in a small spiral notebook. It started humbly with basic records like fastest time running around the block, number of push-ups, times hitting a ping pong ball up and down on a table tennis bat, and the highest house made from playing cards. It was pretty basic, but word of the book got around and soon kids from around the neighbourhood were coming to our house to have a crack at various records. So began the Hamelin Crescent Book of Records.
On a typical Saturday afternoon our backyard resembled a sort of Greek gymnasium of oddball sporting prowess and deep concentration with a dozen kids climbing trees, bouncing tennis balls, balancing apples, killing flies, holding their breath under water in the pool, and so on.
A lot of the records were about patience and endurance. 1,256…1,257…1,258… But finding ways to kill time on a boring holiday afternoon was a survival requirement growing up in the 70s before TikTok and Candy Crush. So, slowly the records became more bizarre. Number of socks on one foot. Most marbles balanced in one eye socket. Most clothes pegs attached to the face. Time lying under a bean bag.
The records continued to get weirder. My big brother took it to an absurd level with a record for the number of times consecutively reciting the words ‘Cracklin’ toenail Oodnadatta’. This was the arc to where the Hamelin Crescent Book of Records inevitably led and culminated. The pinnacle was reached with a challenge called ‘The Dickhead Record’.
The Dickhead Record was simply the longest time spent wearing nothing but black leather school shoes and white Y-front underpants. My sister set the record, but questions were raised as she had simply slept in the outfit in bed, whereas I had proudly strutted around the house all day in a display of maximum dickheadness, thereby securing the official title. As the only known record of its type, I maintain that the Dickhead Record should be recognised by Guinness, with my 1970s effort listed in its pages under ‘Dickhead, Worlds biggest’.
Anyway, I tell you all this to illustrate the prime place the dickhead held in Australian culture in the 70s. Back then being a dickhead was more than a simple insult directed at someone acting like an idiot. There was some honour in being a dickhead.
Dickhead culture eschewed coolness. It was a resistance to over-earnestness. It was less aggressively confrontational than punk, more self-aware than boganism, but more outlandish than simple dagginess. It required some effort and humility to be a true dickhead. Monty Python, The Goodies, and Aunty Jack were inspirations.
Sadly, in our current woke and narcissistic world, true dickheadery seems to have all but disappeared. Suffocating earnestness reigns. Look at me and my virtue signal. I would respect Greta Thunberg a lot more if once in a while she’d ditch the keffiyeh and wrap a string of sausages around her head and sing Gloria by Laura Branigan in a falsetto voice.
Even viral videos of pranksters and stunts are more about showing off, or spectacles designed to produce shock and disgust. It takes way more selflessness to submit to being an object of true mockery. In a weird, admirable way, I think Donald Trump is a bit of an American dickhead.
Like its close relatives, the bogan and the dag, Australia has a proud history of dickhead culture, sadly not reflected in the cultural inclusion classes I’ve been subjected to at work. Maybe we need to create a flag, although all the colours have been taken by the greedy Queer community, whose antics I also find increasingly dull.
We dickheads have been invisible too long. We need our Stonewall. It’s time to have a National Dickhead Week complete with its own Dickhead Games where we can proudly raise the only flag left to us – a giant pair of white Y-front underpants.