Meet the Guy Drinking 2,000 Pints in 200 Days

There are many ways to achieve legend status, as long as you go hard enough. Some people run ultra-marathons across entire continents, others eat world-beating quantities of hot dogs. And one guy, 25-year-old Jon May from Sheffield, is going hard at pints. May’s challenged himself to drink 2,000 pints in 200 days, and he’s gained thousands of loyal followers on his TikTok as a result.

2,000 sounds easy, you might think. After all, Brits are some of Europe’s heaviest drinkers, downing the alcohol equivalent of around 400 pints of beer per person per year, according to the OECD. May thought the same thing: He says inspiration first struck when he saw someone else online trying to do 1,000 pints in a year. ‘I could double that,’ he thought.

“I started off with 2,000 pints a year,” he tells VICE, “but then I went too quickly, so I shortened it to 200 days because it sounds good.”

It’s not as easy as he makes it out. May’s challenge involves getting through ten pints a day, every day, without a break. “On the one hand, you’re essentially killing your liver, and on the other you’re doing something mildly impressive,” he says. He keeps a meticulous record of his progress in a spreadsheet, live-streaming most of his pints directly from the pub to prove he’s actually drinking them, and posts near-daily update videos on TikTok. At the time of writing, he’s amassed nearly 80,000 followers and millions of views, and has now made TikTok his full-time job.

When asked about the hangovers, he shrugs it off: “I’m too young for hangovers,” he says. “And you can’t get hungover unless you’re sober anyway.” But the financial consequences are becoming an issue. He drinks some of his pints at home to “save money”, but he’s already spent upwards of £6,000 on beer, and predicts he’ll have reached £8,000 by the end of his challenge later this month. In his words, he’s “propping up the UK economy.”

In some corners, he’s being revered as a sort of folk hero. “I was at a wedding the other day and some random guy started kissing my shoes,” he says. He’s getting recognised at the pubs in his local town of Guildford, and can’t set foot in some of them without being stopped for photos. Online though, people are less impressed. “If you look at a video with 1.3 million views, I’d say about 75 percent of those comments are hate,” he says. “It used to get to me, but now I’ve realised they’re just jealous they can’t drink pints as well as I can.”

A lot of the criticism centres around whether what he’s doing is in any way safe. It’s reassuring that May’s liver “doesn’t currently hurt”. But according to UK health advice, just five drinks in around two hours is considered binge drinking for men, and comes with a number of health risks, including changes to the brain, liver diseases and heart problems. “Once I’m finished, I will go to the doctor and have a scan,” he says.

It’s fair to say that most British people haven’t got much to cheer for these days. For all the money, time and health risks, May has built up an online fandom that seems fuelled by something akin to national pride. “This is probably the most British thing anyone can do,” he says, “counting the number of pints they’re drinking in an Excel spreadsheet.” Later this month he’ll reap his rewards at a pub in Birmingham, where he’s being paid to drink his momentous 2,000th pint in front of a live audience. “Quite a few people say they’ll be there,” he says. “I’ve even had people from Ireland saying they’re going to fly over for it.”

And afterwards? Will he ever be able to stomach a pint again? “I reckon I’ll give it two weeks,” he says. “Then I think I’ll go on to reviewing pints.”