“He did not scream for a movie stunt or a viral challenge. He shouted ‘now’ in a radio studio, wrecked his voice for days, and ended up in the Guinness record books.”
The world’s loudest person right now is not a singer, not a drill sergeant, and not some reality TV contestant with a microphone in hand.
He is a 58-year-old town crier from Canberra.
Joseph McGrail-Bateup, an Australian air-conditioner cleaner who also serves as Canberra’s honorary town crier, has been recognised by Guinness World Records after producing a shout that reached 122.4 decibels loud enough to break the previous record and loud enough to sit in the same noise range as a chainsaw, an ambulance siren at close range or even a jet taking off.
The word he shouted was simple: “now.”
That one word was enough to take the record.
McGrail-Bateup beat the old mark of 121.7 decibels, which had been held since 1994 by Northern Irish schoolteacher Annalisa Flanagan, who famously yelled “quiet.” Guinness has now recognised his attempt as the loudest shout by an individual, although McGrail-Bateup himself has been careful about how he describes it. He has said he sees himself as the loudest man rather than the loudest person, because Flanagan still holds the women’s record.
It is a strange record, yes, but the backstory makes it even better.
McGrail-Bateup is not some random man who woke up and decided to test how hard he could yell. He has actually spent years around competitive shouting because of his role as Canberra’s official town crier, a ceremonial job he took on in 2017. Under the name Lord Joseph, he announces community events, appears at fetes and car shows, and belongs to the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Australian Town Criers, which is exactly the kind of wonderfully old-fashioned organisation it sounds like.
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That world, odd as it may sound, is where this record really began.
He had already won a guild competition in 2024 with a 98-decibel cry of “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez,” the traditional call town criers use to get attention before making a public announcement. But the Guinness attempt was a different beast entirely. It took place on May 2 in a Canberra radio studio, where the shout was recorded by a professional acoustic engineer with witnesses present before the evidence was sent off to Guinness.
And it was not exactly easy on his throat.
McGrail-Bateup said it took seven attempts to get the record and left his voice “shot” for the next couple of days. He described it as something you cannot really practise for because of how much strain it puts on your voice.
“It took me seven attempts just for one word,” he said, adding that his voice was “husky” and “terrible” afterwards.
There is also something oddly fitting about the fact that a town crier ended up with this title.
Town criers, after all, were the original human loudspeakers the people whose whole job was to make announcements in public before newspapers, radio or social media existed. In most places the role is ceremonial now, more tradition than necessity. But in McGrail-Bateup’s case, the skill clearly still has practical value.
This is also not his first Guinness record. Back in 2019, he briefly held a record in archery for the fastest time to shoot 10 arrows, though that one did not last long. A seven-year-old boy broke it nine months later. He seems to find that funny rather than painful. In fact, he has already said he would not mind if someone beats his shouting record too.
That might be the best part of the whole story.
There is no grand message here, no global political fight, no billion-dollar company collapsing, no war, no scandal. Just a man with an unusually powerful voice, a ceremonial bell-ringing side job, and a willingness to blow out his vocal cords in pursuit of something wonderfully ridiculous.
And somehow, that makes it one of the more enjoyable world records to come along in a while.
