University of Sheffield Arts Tower: Video of TV comic Tim Key riding unusual paternoster lift goes viral

The Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning funnyman, perhaps best known for playing Alan Partridge’s sidekick Simon, graduated from the university in 2000 with a degree in Russian Studies. He returned this week and filmed himself riding the paternoster lift at the Arts Tower, sharing the 45-second clip to Twitter, where it has already been viewed more than 400,000 times.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a paternoster lift, it is a continuously operating lift which has no doors and which users must step on and off while it is still moving. The paternoster lift at the Arts Tower, which has 38 two-person cars travelling up and down the building at a steady rate of one floor per 14 seconds, is the biggest in the world.

Tim Key shared the video of the lift, which has a traffic light system alerting users when it is safe to embark and disembark, with the phrase: “You never lose it.” The video prompted lots of people who have used that paternoster lift or those elsewhere, including former students, to share their memories.

‘Girl asked me out in lift and I bottled it’

One person wrote: “Oh the memories on that paternoster! A girl on my course got on with me once and feigned scratching her head to pull the emergency cord to ask me out…I bottled it and said no while we carried on to the bottom in an awkward silence.”

Another person commented ‘I loved using the paternoster...seamless and efficient!’, and a third said: “I once delivered office furniture in that building. Desks and chairs - using that lift.”

One viewer said the Sheffield paternoster lift looked ‘far snazzier’ than the ones at the University of Leicester, which they joked were ‘built out of plywood and hope’. Rating Tim Key’s technique, one person joked ‘didn't go all the way under, 5/10’, while another former user wrote: “They have a traffic light system now? That takes away all of the fun!”

The paternoster lift, which has appeared on TV, is fitted with safety features to ensure no one can get trapped. But for those who are still too apprehensive there are also standard lifts in which you can ride up and down the 22-storey Arts Tower.