{"id":311054,"date":"2025-11-27T00:34:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T00:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/311054\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T00:34:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T00:34:08","slug":"bizarre-and-wonderful-tale-would-make-fantastic-movie-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/311054\/","title":{"rendered":"Bizarre and wonderful tale would make fantastic movie \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The extraordinary story of two Irish<\/a> daredevils who vied for the world record for the longest time spent buried alive<\/a> is told in the engagingly idiosyncratic new TG4<\/a> documentary<\/a> Beo Faoin bhF\u00f3d (Buried Alive). <\/p>\n

It\u2019s an exhilaratingly quirky tale relayed with considerable charm \u2013 and you wonder why the tale of larger-than-life Tipperary<\/a> farmer Mick Meaney and his more stoic Cobh, Co Cork<\/a>, nemesis Tim Hayes isn\u2019t better known. It would make for a fantastic movie \u2013 imagine Brendan Gleeson<\/a> and Colin Farrell<\/a> trading barbs from six feet under as these sworn rivals. <\/p>\n

Meaney grew up \u201con the side of a mountain\u201d in Tipperary but was moved to Kilburn, London<\/a>, in the 1960s to provide for his young family (who remained in Ireland). There he met a cute Kerryman and former circus performer named Michael \u201cButty\u201d Sugrue, who operated several pubs in the UK capital and was always on the lookout for new publicity stunts. <\/p>\n

He saw in Meaney someone whom he could both make famous and take advantage of. Brave but perhaps guileless, in 1968 Meaney accepted Sugrue\u2019s challenge \u2212 stay underground for 61 days with only a pipe connecting him to the world above. It wasn\u2019t his first experience of burial: while digging a tunnel as a labourer, he had been caught in a landslide, so he knew what it was to feel the earth pressed all around.<\/p>\n

The stunt was a moneymaking venture \u2013 though not for Meaney. Visitors to Sugrue\u2019s pub, the Admiral Nelson, could talk to the subterannean adventurer via a connecting phone line \u2013 but only after stuffing cash in a tin. None of these payments found their way to Meaney or his family, as his daughter Mary recalls. \u201cWhen you came to speak to Mick, you put money into a box for the family but the family never got it,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Back in Cobh, Hayes was sceptical about Meaney\u2019s achievements. Having discovered his passion for sleeping in coffins while caught in the rain in Tokyo, Hayes had taken to burying himself in regulation-size coffins and felt that Meaney\u2019s much larger casket was a \u201chotel\u201d and tantamount to cheating. <\/p>\n

The Guinness Book of Records recognised Hayes\u2019s achievements, and for many years, he held the record for the longest stay in a standard coffin \u2013 242 hours, 58 minutes. Meaney\u2019s 61 days was, however, eclipsed in 1968 by a nun from Belgium who had parlayed her fondness for sleeping in a crypt into a 100-day stretch underground.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The story of the Irishman buried alive in KilburnOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But even years afterwards, tensions between the two Irishmen endured \u2013 in a black and white interview, we see a much older Meaney challenging Hayes to a bury-off. It never happened \u2013 and their rivalry slipped through the cracks of history. But this engaging film has now put their story back into the spotlight \u2013 and what a bizarre and wonderful tale it is. <\/p>\n

It is also a warning about the intoxicating effects of fame, as Mary Meaney explains. \u201cMoney didn\u2019t bother him; money wasn\u2019t his god,\u201d she says of her father. \u201cIt\u2019s a divine feeling. You want that feeling back the rest of your life. You want that spotlight back. That\u2019s where the problem lies.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The extraordinary story of two Irish daredevils who vied for the world record for the longest time spent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,17101,134,2022,344,176254,176255],"class_list":{"0":"post-311054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cork","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-tg4","15":"tag-tipperary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}