Feature Writer
It started 12 years ago in a modest living room in the southwest of England. Or maybe it was the backyard. A couple of kids began amusing themselves by lying down stock-straight on things scattered around the room. A couch, a patio, a chair.
"I cannot remember, to be honest with you," says Gary Clarkson. "It was just a really stupid, random thing to do."
Clarkson, 27, and his buddy, Christian Langdon, 24, called it the Lying Down Game. They began picking more daring spots to perform something that falls between a prank and performance art. First, it was public places. Then the centre of town.
"Someone had a go at me after I did it hanging off a rooftop," says Langdon. "And I tried doing it on a spiky fence (pause). That wasn't very good."
It spread through their clique, then through the rest of the neighbourhood. It went viral after the pair created a Facebook group in late 2007.
Today, the game Langdon and Clarkson created as kids has spawned a European underground obsession, a 64,000-member strong Facebook group, and the official post-goal celebration of Accrington Stanley Football Club.
"It just exploded. It is totally insane," says Clarkson.
The rules of the Lying Down Game are this – look like you're standing up while lying down. So, face squashed into the ground, arms rigid at your sides, soles of the feet at right angles to the ground.
Photos across the Web show people lying down on radiators, plinths, landmarks, on top of other people and in the nude (which is a different sort of game altogether).
Langdon's favourite shows an airport worker lying down inside the engine of a passenger jet.
"Gary done one in front of his boss," says Langdon gleefully. "He doesn't look best pleased at all."
Lying Down participants judge daring in three categories – public nature of the spot, creativity of the background and the number of people involved. More, obviously, is better – both in terms of participants and observers.
"People generally think you're mad," says Clarkson. "That's sort of the point."
The game got its first mainstream exposure in July, when it was featured on a national news program in the U.K. Within months, the Facebook group boasted participants from across Europe and Asia. How about Canada?
"I expect so," says Langdon. "Frankly, it's too big for me to keep track of anymore."
It went global last week when seven doctors and nurses employed at a U.K. hospital were caught playing the game on duty.
They posted pictures of themselves lying down on operating tables, lined up in hospital hallways and supine on the rooftop helicopter pad. A manager saw the shots on Facebook. The offenders were suspended, and may yet be fired. The case generated international headlines.
"Fair play to them, for playing the game, but it's quite bad, isn't it," says Langdon. "They were really supposed to be working, weren't they?"
"At the end of the day, it is their fault. But I don't want to think that the thing me and a mate created for a laugh has lost someone their job," says Clarkson.
As the game grows, some can't help but begin parsing its significance. The photos sometimes look vaguely creepy, even ghoulish. But they are leavened by those key spices in all British humour – a hint of aberrant sexuality combined with public humiliation.
"Someone on YouTube called it a `sick pagan pastime,'" says Clarkson. "I've never explored the meaning of it. (sigh) There are some ridiculous people out there."
The pair do worry when they're confronted with death-defying lie-downs.
"I've seen some quite crazy things, people lying down on train tracks and the sort. I don't approve of that," says Clarkson. "That sounds terribly adult, I know."
Growth continues at a spectacular pace. Between the website and the Facebook group, up to 1,000 new pictures are uploaded each day.
The next step is monetizing their creation. There is now an official website – lyingdowngame.net. With the help of a pair of friends, Langdon, a chef and DJ in Wrexham, and Clarkson, a salesman of building supplies still living in Somerset, have started merchandising. They hope to pioneer some sort of monthly contest with a cash prize.
"I don't know when that number (of new participants) is going to stop rising," says Clarkson, and then less than half seriously. "Frankly, I'm beginning to think we should start charging."
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