Hey, look! It's a superhuman genius!

Okay, I've finally seen it. Here's a bit of "the making of" dialogue, just for my loyal bloglings...

Director Matt: Can you say that again, but say "Marti Pellow out of Wet Wet Wet"? Because if you just say Marti Pellow, people won't know who you're talking about.

UK Memory Genius Ben: Okay. Should I explain who Elmer Fudd is, too?

Director Matt: No, everybody knows who Elmer Fudd is.

Poor Marti. Also, for the record, can I just stress that I HAVE now got a job, and money, and everything else anybody could want. I'm very grateful to my neighbour who put a friendly letter and £10 through the door this morning, but I'm not actually in imminent danger of starving to death for want of money. For that matter, can I make it clear that when I quit my job it was always with the intention of just having fun and then going back to the office in a year or so, not an attempt to make a career out of being a memory genius? I just worry that the wrong impression's going to come across there, and I seem like a slightly more hopeless case than I really am.

Apart from that, it was good fun. Ariel the pianist looks like he'll be fun to hang out with in a few years' time, he's almost certainly going to grow up into a long-haired, extremely cool, piano-playing hippy dropout celebrity who's actually a genuinely nice guy. Akiane the artist rather less so, but great paintings. Would've been good to see her sketching something, though - I know it's hard to capture the artistic process on a brief TV segment, but the scenes of her pretending to put the finishing touches to a painting didn't really put across how she goes about creating her pictures.

Anyway, that's the last you'll be seeing of me on telly for a while, to the best of my knowledge. A similarly-themed BBC documentary early next year, most likely - they filmed me in London over the weekend, and will be pestering me a bit more in the future.

And now I've got that out of the way, I can finally get round to writing the story of the UK Memory Championship and the MSO and the impressive way I found my way around the streets of London without getting excessively lost, and how I told Nigel Short I was a big fan of his when I was a nerdy teenager. I think I'll break it into chapters and blog it over the next few days.

And on an unrelated note, I just want to say hi to Jason. Hi, Jason!