Everyone's after interviewing me now. The BBC want to do a bit about the world memory championships for the 'Child of our Time' series, apparently to show what the human mind is capable of. Although it's flattering to be considered an example of the pinnacle of human intellect, I can't help thinking they're in for a rude awakening when they see what the WMC is really like. I got copied in on an email from the director, which contains a couple of choice lines:
"From first glance the binary numbers, faces and names, and random words look most appealing for the television audience."
Now, I'm not sure what they think binary numbers involves, but if you didn't know, it's a room full of people looking at sheets of paper with lots and lots of 1s and 0s on them, for half an hour. Then the invigilators take away the sheets of paper and give the competitors blank paper. Then the competitors spend the next sixty minutes writing down all the 1s and 0s they can remember. If you're the kind of weirdo who likes this kind of thing, then it is a lot of fun. If you're watching it on telly, you will not be enthralled. Believe me.
In the same email, we have "At the moment I feel it may be good to follow a British child and an adult who are looking like hopeful."
Obviously it would be natural to think that the dozens of people competing in the WMC would contain a reasonable selection of Britons. In fact, while there might be anything up to fifty competitors there, Team Britain will almost certainly consist of me and Ed again, with the possibility of Andi showing up to round it out to a whopping three. Britain always provides the world champion (a tradition I'm determined to keep going), but for the last few years we've been decidedly short on numbers.
As for children, there aren't any in Britain who are interested in 'memory sports'. In fact, I doubt there are any who even know such a thing exists. Not like in Germany and Austria where people like Gunther Karsten, Franz-Josef Schumeckers and Luise Sommer train huge hordes of enthusiastic littluns in memory skills, organise children's championships with big prizes, lecture in schools and everything. If there was someone over here who could be bothered to do that, perhaps memory tricks wouldn't be a dying skill in this country.
Not that I'm complaining - the WMC will doubtless move away from Britain for good, and I'll get to travel abroad a bit more. And all the above complaints aside, it's great to see it getting a bit of coverage on the BBC. I'm sure they'll find something to entertain and enlighten the viewing public, and I'll look forward to seeing it. I might try to persuade them to follow Ed around instead of me, though - he's more of a character, and that's what we need if we're trying to make the WMC a bit more popular.
Anyway, I practised binaries tonight, and it went very well. Practically no mind-wandering all the way through. This weekend, the hour events. Fingers crossed.
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