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Flash mobs are spontaneous gatherings of people in public places, where they demonstrate their enthusiasm for such activities as singing, dancing, fox hunting, spit roasting and mine disposal.
The largest recorded flash mob occurred in Mexico in 2009, when almost 14,000 people recreated the dance routine from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, though this claim is hotly disputed by the British Society of Amnesiacs, who organised an event with more than 22,000 participants, 9,000 of whom forgot where they were supposed to meet.
In 2006, the Flash Mob Hall of Fame inducted its first mobsters, including Bill Wasik, who devised the original 2003 event held in the rug department of Macy’s New York department store, the 306 weather forecasters who created a flash flood mob in Brockwell Lido in 2009, the 1,083 bankers who were mugged during their flash the cash mob in 2012 and the 692 chronic diarrhoea sufferers who produced the flash in a pan mob at Waterloo station in 2011.
The largest flash mob confined to pensioners was the Flash mob created by the 73 office cleaners sacked by Lehmann Brothers when it collapsed in 2008.