No Stunts--He Earned His Place in the Record Book

Dethroned junk bond king Michael Milken is keeping company these days with a clam eater, a nonstop talker and a 66-pound cucumber. The $550-million salary he earned in 1987 is one of 29 new entries accepted last month by the Guinness Book of World Records. Milken was known for his innovative use of high-yield, high-risk “junk bonds” in corporate financing while working for the New York investment firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert, which paid him a percentage of the profits. He is under indictment for securities fraud and is scheduled to be tried next year. Guinness also accepted a 66-pound cucumber grown by Eileen Chappel of Australia; R. Meenakshisundaram of India, who spoke for 260 hours consecutively, and Andoni Basterrechea of Spain, who ate 424 clams in one minute and 39.5 seconds.

--Walt Disney studios has said “harrumph” to a proposal by a Canadian town that claims to be the birthplace of Winnie the Pooh to erect a giant statue of the famous bear. Tom Bagdon, president of the Chamber of Commerce in White River, Ontario, said the bear on whom British writer A. A. Milne based his children’s stories and whose likeness is licensed by Walt Disney Co. was born near White River in 1914. Englishman Harry Colebourn bought young Pooh from a trapper for $17 and named him after his adopted city of Winnipeg. Later, the bear was brought to England and eventually ended up in the London Zoo. It was there that Milne and his son, Christopher Robin, first spotted the now-legendary bear. Bagdon said White River’s proposal to erect a 25-foot-high likeness of Winnie drew an abrupt response from Disney. In a letter to a lawyer representing White River, the company said such a move would not be in line with its “contractual commitments and present and future plans for this character.”

--The 21 Club, the renowned Manhattan watering hole, is opening its cavernous wine cellar for private dining--for $350 a head. Built in 1929 during Prohibition as a fortress against federal agents looking for illicit booze, the celler is hidden behind a 5,000-pound, 3-foot-thick secret door that, tradition has it, never was discovered in more than 20 raids. Here Mayor Jimmy Walker tipped a few with his girlfriend, actress Betty Compson. And among the racks containing 2,500 cases of wine are 600 bottles of private stock, among them Aristotle Onassis’ Pommery 1962 and Joan Crawford’s Dom Perignon 1959.