Buried alive: The fascinating tale of Mitchelstown's Mick Meaney and his Kilburn stunt
Mick Meaney with his manager Butty Sugrue after completing 61 days underground, a feat explored in a new TG4 documentary.
Mick Meaney was an unlikely celebrity. He was born in 1934 on a farm, on the side of a mountain, outside Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary. He emigrated to London, working as navvy, and was sending remittances back to Mitchelstown, Co Cork, for his pregnant wife and three-year-old daughter when he captured the world’s attention in 1968 with an audacious stunt to bury himself alive in the heart of London in a world record attempt for the “longest time spent buried alive”.
Kerryman Michael “Butty” Sugrue, a kind of father figure to Meaney, was the impresario pulling the strings. Sugrue was a rogue, and a legendary figure amongst the Irish community in London in the 1960s. He had worked in the circus as a strongman, and owned a couple of London pubs, including The Admiral Nelson in Kilburn. “He would never be the one who went into the hole,” as a contributor says during (Buried Alive), a TG4 documentary about Meaney’s story.
