When people hear about my typing record, they have a lot of questions – so I thought I’d kick off the new blog by typing up some answers to the common ones. Yes, typing them up. I wasn't going to write them on the back of a napkin, was I. I'm rubbish at that.

Joel, are you the fastest typist in the world?!

Not exactly. According to Guinness World Records, I'm the fastest person ever to type five sentences – in 18.33s.

How did you manage that?

It was part of a competition held by Cadbury in March. As the ‘official snack provider’ to the 2012 Olympic games (yes, really) they are running ‘Spots v Stripes’ – a campaign designed to get people off their arses and highlight the fact that snacks aren’t just for fatties. Wanting to get involved – but being a bit of a fatty myself – I plumped for the online typing challenge, bagging first place after a few attempts, and all without actually getting off my arse.

Five sentences? That's a bit vague. What did you have to type?

The sentences were as follows. They were displayed in a random order so you couldn’t just train a woodpecker to do it for you.

A long long time ago there was a tiger and a cheetah.
The cheetah was by far the quicker of the two.
Thus the Spots gained an advantage over their rivals.
Fast forward a few hundred years to the 1950s.
The latest craze is for "go faster" stripes down the side of your car.

What's that in words per minute?

177 words per minute, or 897 keys per minute. That's almost 15 key presses per second.

Is anyone faster than that?

Yeah. The great spotted woodpecker, for example, can peck 20 times per second. Even more embarrassingly, his brain can handle ten times the deceleration mine can before it turns to mush, and to make matters worse he even has his own cartoon series. Yes, the woodpecker is better than me in every way. What a massive tit.

Woody aside, there are faster typists, but what you must remember is that not one of them holds the record for typing 54 words of nonsense about the history of two wrapping paper patterns – so they can suck it.

Hang on, wouldn’t some kind of official have to be present for it to be a proper record?

That’s exactly what I thought. In fact, when I entered the competition I had no idea there was a world record up for grabs. When they contacted me about it I was still incredulous – that is, until Rich from Guinness World Records appeared on my door step, with Faye from the PR company and a local photographer in tow. “You must be very proud,” Rich told my father, without the slightest hint of irony.

As he congratulated me on my ‘achievement’, Rich exuded levels of sincerity that even X-Factor sycophant Dermot O’Leary couldn't quite muster. I began to wonder if he might have the most enjoyable job going. Alright, he’s not awarding Nobel prizes, but not many people can say that they travel the country congratulating others on their comically trivial super powers. You can do a lot worse than that – although given he met me in Braintree and was on his way to Pontefract, perhaps I am sugar coating his lifestyle just a little.

What did it say in the newspaper?

Did you really give them that quote?

No, they concocted it without speaking to me, which is why it reads like I’m on a double dose of Ritalin. But hey, at least they implied I have friends. You wouldn't have guessed that from the picture alone.

What would you have said instead?

Spots v Stripes is a fabulously well executed campaign and there seem to be a lot of hardworking people behind it, so to help them out I’d have said something about how cool it is that Cadbury are encouraging people to lead more active lifestyles. That or I'd have made a joke about fingering. We'll never know, now.

Have you thought of being a court reporter / live subtitler / professional keyboardier? I bet it pays well.

I’d hate learning all the court jargon, subtitles use bizarre semi-automatic phonetic systems, and ‘professional keyboardier’ isn’t a thing. Besides, I’d like to stay strictly amateur in anticipation of typing being made an Olympic sport. Having said that, if anyone happens to be running an interesting conference and wants some live transcription, get in touch. I might be up for that.

What's your secret?

After the first few photos came back, the PR folks must have thought they'd discovered my speed typing secret: one massive incredible hulk arm. Unfortunately that's just a cruel camera trick masterminded by the photographer and his wide angle lens. I have two normal sized human arms.

Do you have any other questions about my comically trivial super power? Drop them in the comments.