Monday 14th March 2005
German shatters shouting world record
Epic gob session ends in glory
by Janus Motsonius
Bayern Munich may just have scraped through to the Champions League quarter-finals last week against a battling Arsenal, but the team is already assured of something to stick in the trophy cabinet this season — the Shouting World Record.
A tearful Munich goalie Oliver Kahn received the honour at a post-match ceremony which saw an inexperienced cub reporter taken away with blood coming from his ears after failing to wear the obligatory ear defenders. Speaking from behind a protective sound-baffling concrete screen, special guests John McEnroe and Sir Alex Ferguson praised Kahn's "absolute committment and professionalism" in snatching the title from previous holder A Hitler — still much admired for his legendary 1938 Nuremberg Rally shoutathon.
The post-match statistics revelead that Kahn had shouted continuously for the full 90 minutes of the tie. Indeed, his teammates later revealed that he had begun to shout six hours before the match, while boarding a plane to London. He continued to bellow at the luggage carousel at Heathrow airport, exhorting it to greater velocity in disgorging his luggage, and thundered incessantly on the transit coach to Highbury. Bayern coach Felix Magath told The Rockall Times: "Oliver gave it 100 per cent, make no mistake. He only stopped shouting for around 30 seconds, just before the game, and that was to take a sip of water and suck on a throat lozenge. The man's a professional's professional."
Close friends of Kahn say that his training for the challenge has bordered on the obsessive. "He starts training at 5am with a light barrage directed at his family and doesn't finish until 11pm when he can be found practising his full-volume technique on some Bierkeller waitress," admitted one partially-deaf drinking buddy. "He'll then bark directions at his regular taxi driver who sits inside a soundproof booth in a specially-reinforced Mercedes."
We tried to ring Kahn this morning for a comment on the honour but were met with a tremendous and incomprehensible roaring which completely destroyed the Rockall Times' switchboard.