The One With the Crazy Fan

Call it the Friends school of acting or just call it crazy, but Londoner Steve Misiura watched the antics of Ross, Rachel, and the gang for 84 hours straight — all in the name of tuition money.

Misiura, a 31-year-old acting hopeful living in London's Brixton neighborhood, needed £7,000 ($11,680) to attend a course at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama. He's also a fan of the hit TV series. So he had a novel idea: A Friends-a-thon. He'd get pals to sponsor him to sit through all 238 episodes of the show without coming up for air — and in the process, he'd break a world record for non-stop TV watching. (He probably also figured he'd get a little press in the process — never bad for a budding actor.)

Misiura kept a blog with photos during his 84 hours of sleeplessness, updating fans and followers hourly, with his problems of nausea, dermatitis, heartburn, stomachaches and hallucination — along with what was going on in the series and who was guest-starring.

"I love Friends, but this did indeed hurt," Misiura told the UK's Daily Mail. "At around 72 hours I wanted to die."

He said, "I started hallucinating. I was saying to my friend, 'What's happening to this room? The wall keeps disappearing.'"

Misiura raised £1500 ($2502) towards his course, with sponsors including actress Natalie Dormer, who played Anne Boleyn in the Jonathan Rhys Meyers TV series The Tudors.

According to the Mail, the would-be actor stayed awake by snacking on apples and setting alarms every five minutes. He also had a steady stream of guest stars, aka his friends popping by.

He began the Friends-a-thon about 6 a.m. July 31 and finally finished at 5:40 p.m. Aug. 3 — 83 hours and 45 minutes later. The previous world record for non-stop TV watching: 72 hours. (He's sent the documentation to the Guinness Book of Records and they should certify his, erm, achievement this fall.)

Misiura posting at 67 hours: "Near the end of season 8 … Rach is being evil to Ross, Joey is being evil to Chandler, I might be evil to Gaz and Mus [his friends] … I should be hating this by now, but I love it. Has dementia set in?"

Quite possibly. Two days after his ordeal, Misiura tweeted: "@David Lynch: After last weekends [sic] world record breaker I’m taking it easy."