Incredible story of Irish labourer buried alive in coffin for 61 days told in new documentary

Mike Meaney, in coffin, teamed up with Michael ‘Butty’ Sugrue, a circus performer turned publican and impresario, who staged a ‘wake’ in his pub. Photograph: TG4

They were known as burial artists – people who had themselves buried alive in macabre feats of endurance – and Mick Meaney resolved to be the best there ever was.

It was 1968 and the Irish labourer had barely a pound to his name but he believed that if he stayed underground in a coffin longer than anyone else the world would remember his name.