Brum

Today's trip to Birmingham University got off to a cracking start. I realised when I got to the train station that I'd left my hat at home. This is, obviously, preferable to leaving it on the train, but it was still annoying, especially since Emma from ITV was coming to film the memo demo, as a taster for the genius documentary. I get very few opportunities to wear my poor hat on TV without people complaining that it shadows my face because of the bright studio lights. Still, I managed to meet up with James and catch our train without any real difficulty, and we spent the short trip up to Birmingham discussing various memory-related topics.

As we were getting off the train at New Street, the man who'd been sitting opposite us and listening in on our conversation said "Excuse me, isn't that your bag?" I'd very nearly left my trusty rucksack, containing my laptop, on the overhead rack. "And you're the memory man!" added the observant gentleman. He obviously thought we'd just been having him on about the whole memory thing. I don't know which would have been more devastating, the loss of my expensive laptop or the loss of my beloved falling-to-pieces rucksack.

Waiting for Emma in the pub at New Street station, we had a go on a quiz machine. One of the questions it posed us was "Who won the men's Wimbledon championship in 1975?"

I grinned at James, who has memorised all the post-war Wimbledon winners for the purposes of our university demos, and said "Hah, great question!" He replied "Um..."

He did get it, just in the time limit, so we both avoided a lot of memory-related embarrassment before the demonstration started. We met up with Emma, got down to the university, prepared our powerpoint demonstrations, had lunch, met up with Other James, found the room and were all ready to begin with plenty of time to spare, for a change. Also for a change, nobody from the university staff came to talk to us. James had been dealing with a Jo, and he did speak to him/her/it on the phone once, briefly, but otherwise we were left to our own devices entirely.

It then turned out that the university hadn't advertised the memory performance at all, and they'd scheduled it to start two hours after lectures finished for the day, so nearly everybody had gone home. We got a whopping six people in the audience, two of whom had to leave early for a seminar. So, all in all, not the best of our demonstrations to have Emma filming. Nonetheless, it all went well. We educated and astounded, as usual, and of the brave six who knew the event was happening and hung around to watch it, at least a couple were very enthusiastic about memory, keen to take part in the upcoming university championship, and happy to spread the good word. So I'd still say the day was a success. Who knows, we might have a future world champion there!

And no long train journeys or overnight stays, either. All universities should be so close to Derby. Tomorrow, I've got this interview in Breedon-on-the-Hill, the most isolated and difficult-to-get-to place in the world. Still, beggars and unemployed accountants who need the money can't be choosers, and it's a good job with good pay. Maybe I could relocate to somewhere closer. Or learn how to teleport instantly from place to place.

Enormous throbbing pens

Another reason why I need a job is because I need to be able to steal pens from the office. I get through biros at a terrible rate - they either disappear or mysteriously break in half when I experiment with them to see how far they'll bend before they break. I bought a couple recently, and now I can't find the things. This is all the more annoying, because there are only two places I ever put pens - on my desk where I memorise things, or on the kitchen counter where I leave whatever I empty out of my pockets. Or occasionally here on the settee if I have occasion to write anything when I'm watching telly or talking on the phone. And yet the things disappear. Perhaps they're running away before I accidentally break them in half.

And no, the book isn't finished. But it is very, very nearly finished and I've done a lot of work on it today and it'll be finished very, very soon! Now I must go, the football's on telly.

A New Dial

Somehow, in the course of a very brief chat on Radio Derby this morning, I announced to the world that I want an old-fashioned telephone with a dial rather than buttons. This is true, and it's been on my mind since I found to my delight that there is one, and a working one at that, at Dundee university. So when Sally Pepper mentioned them in the interview, naturally I felt it necessary to expand at length on how cool they are.

You see 'retro-style' phones for sale in gimmick shops, but those are very tacky things with buttons arranged in the style of a dial. Very phoney and tasteless, and I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

I just said 'phoney' in a blog about telephones, and didn't realise that there was a pun there.

Anyway, my current phone isn't tacky at all - it's a very stylish transparent plastic one with coloured LEDs that light up when it rings. But I would cheerfully dump it for one with a real dial if I found one lying around.

I won't go looking for one just yet, though. If I stay at home and don't do anything else all day, I could finish my book tomorrow. That's the plan, anyway.

Has it really been that long?

I've been doing this blog, every night except those nights when I didn't, for over two and a half years now! The time has just flown by, hasn't it?

Anyway, the interview today went pretty well, I think. I'm hopeful of getting a second interview at least for it, and Ilkeston seems like a nice place to work - I've never been there before, but it's populated by at least one person who recognised me from the telly, and another who admires people who wear Blue Peter badges. I'm sure the town would embrace me with open arms. And try to steal my badge, possibly.

Anyway, the weekend beckons, and things need to be done. Especially the book, I'm running out of excuses to justify to myself not having finished it yet. Especially since I stressed in the interview today how good I am at getting things done to tight deadlines. Funnily enough, in my accountant persona I really am very good at that, it's just normal-Zoomy who can't get his book-writing act together.

Busy day

Right, things I've arranged today - interview at Gardner Aerospace in Ilkeston tomorrow (roughly seven month thing covering maternity leave), interview of another kind on Radio Derby on Saturday (so, mister memory, just how can we remember those important anniversaries and names? Exactly the kind of thing I normally turn down, but a bit of self-publicity is important if we're going to get people to give us money for demonstrations/competitions in the near future), ITV coming to film us doing a uni demonstration at Birmingham on Monday, interview of the first kind in the middle of nowhere on Tuesday.

Also, I think I might have developed the ability to do a 'safe' speed cards run in under 30 seconds. Or maybe it just went extraordinarily well today with the three packs I attempted. We'll see - this was the first practice I've done for much too long, so I need to get back into things.

Interesting statistic

The train journey from Dunbar to Derby is precisely long enough to play 76 head-to-head games of DS Tetris. I would record for posterity which of me and James won the epic championship 40-36, but it wasn't me, so I won't.

One of these days, I'll find the time to write in detail about a uni demo, because today's was a lot of fun. However, today isn't one of these days, because it's late and I've only just got home. Tomorrow might be one of these days, though.

The Labour Party hates me

Let's have a lunchtime blog, just for a change, since this afternoon I'm off to Dundee, home of D C Thomson's comic publishing empire and probably other things too, although I don't know of any. It's a long old train journey just to display my memory to a bunch of students, but at least it keeps me off the streets.

There is an airport at Dundee, but apparently you can only fly there from London, and then only if you pay three hundred pounds for the privilege. The uni are paying for our travel, but I think they'd frown on that kind of extravagance. Although lastminute.com did offer me a wonderful route plan when I looked into flying from Birmingham - changing at Edinburgh and London. In that order. Birmingham-Edinburgh-London-Dundee. I was tempted to take it just for the sheer silliness of it.

Anyway, in the post today I got a little leaflet from Labour, very nicely printed, mail merge with my name and everything, they've wasted a very impressive amount of taxpayers' money on it, saying that they're 'on the side of hard-working families in Hartington Street.' There's not a lot of writing on the thing, just a couple of brief paragraphs, but it refers to hard-working families five times.

What have they got against single people? I'm not the only bachelor in the street, there are lots of single people here! Hard-working single people, too! In fact, although I haven't analysed the demographics, most of the street's old Victorian houses are divided up into small flats, so I'd be prepared to bet that the majority of residents around here aren't in fact families.

Well, squish to you, councillor Shiraz Khan and your vague pledges to 'continue improving Arboretum Park', 'start upgrading street lighting' and 'demand more Police Community Support Officers'. I shall jolly well vote for someone who isn't prejudiced against the unmarried!

Employment

At least one, possibly two job interviews tomorrow, depending on whether one agency gets back to me tomorrow morning before I leave for the interview arranged by another agency at another company. Both jobs are in horribly out-of-the-way places that would need me to relocate or cycle long distances if I got them, but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

On the other hand, employment in another sense looks like it might be possible at some point in the future - branching out from our university demos into demos for businesses, charging money this time and justifying it by using this money to subsidise schools demonstrations and competitions. Sounds like it could be fun, although it's a lot of work.

Anyway, going up to Dundee tomorrow night for another uni demonstration, after all the excitement of the interviews. I'll be worn out. Luckily, I've spent all day today reading Harry Potter fan fiction on the internet, just to conserve energy for the rigours ahead.

It's not the winning...

... it's the comforting knowledge that you avoided coming dead last by the narrowest of tie-break margins. So, yes, in terms of othello achievement this weekend wasn't the greatest, but, you know, it really is about the taking part. For the record, I won three and lost eight, and the ones I lost were often quite horrible thrashings generally brought about by stupid mistakes on my part. Still, I found out that I've been featured in Dutch news reports quite a lot recently, and not just for chimp-related reasons, either. And I had a strange dream last night in which Phil Chambers refused to let me audition for his pantomime production of Aladdin, on the grounds that my memory achievements make me too well known - this was apparently the kind of panto that avoids casting celebrities and insists on unknown actors in order to make it more believable. I'm not sure if this is my subconscious reacting badly to my recent fame, or reminding me of my lifelong desire to be a panto actor. Probably both. Aubrey also featured in the dream, now I come to think of it, but I can't remember how. He'd make a good Widow Twankey.

Anyway, I'm feeling all motivated and dynamic go-ahead achieveresque at the moment. There'll be books written, new jobs found, othello transcripts typed up and sent to Geoff, memory training sessions done, all kinds of things. A weekend away does you good. Except from a bank-balance point of view. Really need to do that new-job-finding thing quite soon.

Fame

Would anyone be interested in a Best Of Zoomy DVD? I got a copy of my Richard and Judy appearance in the post today, which I can add to my collection along with The Mentalists, The Memory Chimp and my starring turn on Blue Peter. As soon as I get round to finding an envelope, I'm going to send them to Raggs, who said he'll make copies for anyone who wants one. I know I could do it myself, or make them into torrents and upload them to the internet, if I was a) technically competent and b) not lazy, but this is the only way it's going to get done, believe me.

Anyway, I've done nothing today, no book-writing or anything, so go ahead and shun me. Going down to Cambridge tomorrow, and I think the book's going to still be not-quite-finished by then, but never mind. Who cares about deadlines, eh?

Conundrum

Great episode of Torchwood tonight. The basic plot was basically stolen wholesale from an old Star Trek episode, but the way it was done was very clever and different.

And speaking of remaking classic TV, I did have a friendly chat with the ITV people about documentarising me again, in a subtly different kind of way to The Mentalists. I must be mad. It was annoying enough the first time round.

I'm very disappointed with myself

I had plans for this blog entry tonight. It was going to be titled "Procrastinate? Me?", and then it was going to say "I drew a funny comic, look:", followed by a funny comic. And then I was going to say "Don't worry, I also wrote lots and lots of my book, too. It's nearly finished now."

But what I've actually done all day is non-stop book writing. I didn't have time to draw any silly pictures or anything. It's terrible, it's like I'm a real writer or something. I'm sure it won't last. Especially since it really is nearly finished now.

Well, I've got ITV people coming round tomorrow to talk about another TV show - something about genius, and whether it can be taught. They quite like my approach of saying 'anyone who calls me a genius is obviously a very stupid person' while still bigging up all the genius-like things I do. That always plays well, for some reason. I must have a real genius for coming across as a nice guy.

Spring has sprung!

What a lovely day! All sunny and warm and springy! So, since I woke up with a rotten cold and a headache, I thought a good long cycle ride would help me feel better. I toured all the local villages for a couple of hours, ending up at Elvaston Castle and generally enjoying the charms of nature. Didn't make me feel any better though - now I've got a rotten cold, a headache and stiff knees. I think I'll just go back to bed.

Deadlines! Really this time!

Okay, so last week, when I thought I didn't have any plans, it turned out I had lots of plans that took up practically all of my time. But THIS week, I really don't have any urgent appointments, and so I am really, definitely going to finish my book. Before Friday, when I go down to Cambridge for the weekend's othello tournament. And if I don't, well, then you should refrain from talking to me until I do finish the thing. Send me to Coventry, unless you're one of my friends who live in Coventry, in which case send me somewhere else of your choice.

Or, if you're one of my friends whom I don't like, talk to me more than you usually do, to punish me for my laziness.

Hartlepool Romance

"Lady Hortensia," said the man in the chip shop, "always a pleasure to see you here. I was terribly sorry to hear about your husband. To be sucked into the workings of a street-cleaning machine and torn to ribbons alongside an assortment of damp crisp packets and fallen leaves is probably the worst way a man can die."

"Indeed," said Lady Hortensia. "My husband, of course, was shot dead by a bank robber during a bungled heist, and didn't die in the way you describe at all."

"Yes, I was trying to comfort you with the knowledge that it could have been very much worse," said the man. "Three white pudding suppers as usual?"

"I hardly think it would be appropriate," said Lady Hortensia, icily. "What with my husband dying and that escaped zebra not yet having been recaptured."

"Oh, hadn't you heard? They caught the zebra yesterday. It's back in the box now," said the man in the chip shop's civil partner from the back room.

"Oh," said Lady Hortensia. "I hadn't heard. My husband was always the one who kept track of the status of escaped animals. Dear me, I never considered how inconvenient it would be to be a widow. Will you marry me?"

"No," said the man in the chip shop. "Here are your pudden suppers, perhaps if you take them to Hartlepool and eat them, a passing man will feel sorry for you and propose marriage."

"It's worth a try, I suppose," said Lady Hortensia. She took the newspaper-wrapped revolting suet-based concotions and greasy chips and jumped on board a passing stagecoach bound for Hartlepool.

"Get the bleeding heck off my bleeding stagecoach!" the driver screamed, letting go of the reins and allowing the wildebeest to veer off into a cornfield. "There's no food and drink allowed on my bleeding stagecoach! The vermin! The vermin will overwhelm me, lusting for the fallen morsels you drop in your greedy consumption of your bleeding food! Didn't they teach you about bleeding vermin in school? Get off my bleeding stagecoach this minute!"

"Oh, I do apologise," said Lady Hortensia as the stagecoach careered out of control across the fields, mangling corn, scarecrows and hedges alike under its copper wheels, the wildebeest, free from the tyrannical reins that daily compelled them to follow tedious cobbled streets and asphalted motorways, chasing with gay abandon every blackbird, vulture and pine marten they saw, heedless of any obstacles in their path as they dragged the coach ever further away from its destination and ever closer to Scunthorpe. "I only wanted to visit Hartlepool in an attempt to find a husband. I don't suppose you would like to marry me?" she added as an afterthought.

"Okay then," said the driver, picking up the reins and attempting to return to the Hartlepool road. "I'm free next Saturday. Big church wedding, St Paul's Cathedral, eleven o'clock? Cost you a fiver, but buy a ticket to Hartlepool and you get to marry the driver for half price. Special offer."

"Splendid," said Lady Hortensia. "White pudding?"

"Don't mind if I do," said the driver. And thus they departed along the damp and narrow streets. Lo, Hartlepool! Slumbering city of romance and dreams, do you know, as you awaken this damp and gloomy morning that another stagecoach of love wends its way ever nearer to your towering and broken-glass-studded walls? That the magic of love inspired by your founder, Alan Hartlepool, so many years ago still permeates every mention of the fair city's name? Or have you, in your dank streets and crumbling overcrowded tenements, become so accustomed to the happy endings of your every inhabitant and visitor that you no longer register each miraculous romance as a thing of note, but merely an everyday happenstance? Lo, wildebeest, snorting in the stagecoach reins, your momentary freedom forgotten amid the excitement and smells of this familiar town! Lo, Dennis Boggis, sitting unmentioned in the chip shop throughout the duration of this story! Perhaps you yourself will one day visit Hartlepool and realise that your true destiny lies in street-sweeping rather than chartered accountancy when you get your first glance of the filth-ridden streets of the city of love!

Wonderland, wonderland...

I've never been to Sunderland before, although I did write a story involving the place (being blown to atoms) in a previous blog entry. It was nothing personal. The memory demonstration today went really well - just me and James Paterson at this one, but we enthralled and illuminated the audience very nicely, I think.

The guy in charge of this one didn't have a silly name or a connection with obscure comics, but he did come from the Cardiff area, and knows Penarth, where James comes from, very well. Which you wouldn't really expect from a uni up in Sunderland, but then even more funnily, it turned out that another guy there is from Lincolnshire, and even had relatives living in Clinton Park, where I went to primary school! Small world.

Also, getting there was no end of fun. All the trains were cancelled, for no adequately explained reason, and we had to go by a very circuitous route. But never mind, that gave us plenty of time for epic Tetris contests on James's DSs. I'm almost tempted to get one of the things myself...

Bloody idle

I was supposed to clean up my flat today - my brother's coming round on Friday night and unless I clear some floor space, he'll have to sleep on the roof, and I'm going to Sunderland for a memo demo tomorrow and Ascot on Thursday for a meeting with the movers and shakers in the organising-a-schools-memory-competition world - but I didn't. I decided that sitting around on my considerable backside was a more reasonable way to spend the time. But I did give blood today, so that means I'm exempt from any and all criticism about what else I've done. I even multi-tasked - while all my vital fluids were being drained away, I was memorising Sunderland FC's results for the season so far, so as I can impress people with them tomorrow.

I'll just have to clean up on Friday morning. And finish my book - that deadline's looking very unrealistic, since it turned out I'm doing lots and lots of things this week after all. Perhaps I'll beg my imaginary editor for another week's extension.

That's strange...

This morning, while doing a bit of research to fill out the trivia section of How To Be Clever, I established that the second poet to be buried in Poets' Corner (thus turning it into Poets' Corner rather than The Place Where Geoffrey Chaucer Happened To Be Buried Alongside Lots Of Non-Poets) was Edmund Spenser. It struck me that I should really have heard of Edmund Spenser before, but I couldn't remember ever coming across the name. Still, it was nice to add to my general knowledge.

Then, this afternoon, idly browsing an internet forum rather than working on How To Be Clever, I saw someone making a passing reference to Edmund Spenser in an entirely non-poetic discussion. I'm sure I haven't seen that kind of mention before. I suspect he never existed before today, and it's all a big internet conspiracy.

Deadlines

It's about time I set myself some. Or one, anyway. I don't have any plans for next week. Yes, I need to look into getting some kind of job, but that's not an all-day-every-day kind of thing. And if I really knuckle down, I could get How To Be Clever finished in the next week. Making an effort to do that would be so much better than dawdling and not finishing it for years. So that's the plan, and anyone who sees me has to pretend to be my editor and ask me why I haven't finished the book yet.

But don't pretend to be Mr Edwards or any of the other teachers who had the unfortunate job of asking me where my coursework was during my schooldays. I never paid any attention to them. Really, if I do finish this book, it might be the first project I've ever actually finished, winning the World Memory Championship aside. I'm just not much of a finisher.

2003 all over again

I woke up an impressive six minutes before today's online memory challenge was due to start - nobody can really be expected to perform at 8:00 am, can they? So I lost my unbeaten record there. Other than that, very little of interest has happened to me today. I feel like this week I've either been too busy doing stuff to blog about about it, or too inactive to have anything to blog about. Well, that'll change next week. I'll make an effort to do things, but not particularly time-consuming things, and then tell you all about them in detail every evening. Won't that be nice?

Santa Drives A Reliant Robin

Ah, the joys of a day off. It's great not to have to get up early to catch a train to London or Preston. I should do it more often.

Anyway, I've just noticed that tonight on ITV at 10:50 there's a new series called "The Law Of The Playground", in which celebrities reminisce about their schooldays, and that Robert Webb is among the celebrities on this first episode. I don't expect he'll mention me, seeing as he didn't (and still doesn't) know I exist, but it would be fun to see him mention some of the teachers and things from QEGS, such as the school show with the title in the subject header above. I'd watch it, but I don't think I can really be bothered. Lately I've formed the opinion that the only things on telly worth watching are the ones that are about me. Or chimps who are better than me.

Blood and sand

The whole Canadian thing went pretty well today - we filmed it at the Canadian embassy, which was a whole new experience. Does that technically mean that I can add Canada to the list of countries I've visited now?

One thing I haven't mentioned about this busy week is that I postponed an appointment to give blood in order to accommodate Tuesday's madness. So if anyone dies for want of a transfusion of B-positive blood between now and next Tuesday, I really do apologise. My bad. Fame and fortune bring nothing but ill.

But to look on the bright side, I watched EastEnders tonight for the first time in yonks, having heard that it was a 30-minute monologue delivered by Dot, and it was absolutely brilliant! Fantastic work by Tony Jordan, the writer. Everyone who didn't watch it tonight, watch the omnibus on Sunday. Even if you're in a different country. I bet it's on the internet somewhere.

North End

The Preston presentation went pretty well, all in all. All the students (and staff) were hugely in awe of my Blue Peter badge, several of them had seen me on Richard and Judy, none of them were Preston North End fans but they were nonetheless impressed by my ability to remember all their results for the season. A huge audience, few of whom left before the end, and you never know, one or two of them might want to take up memory as a hobby, inspired by how cool we are.

But the coolest thing of all? Well, remember how the last one was organised by Professor Perfect (giggle), who sounds like a character from a comic? This one was ACTUALLY organised by a character from a comic! She's a friend of Bryan Talbot and was the model for a prostitute Helen encounters in "The Tale Of One Bad Rat"! AND she knows Leo Baxendale! I was going to say her real name here, but then it occurred to me that some student of hers might google her some time and spread it all around the university.

I've never met anyone who's actually a character from a comic before! Oh, wait, except that I think Carlos Pacheco drew Kurt Busiek into the background in Avengers Forever, but that doesn't really count. This is the coolest thing ever!

Okay, London again tomorrow, I still need to memorise the 52 greatest Canadians, I'm sure it'll be fun. And after that, I stop doing all this mad memory-related publicity and start being normal again. It'll be a relief.

I got a thank-you card from Richard and Judy

Signed by the joint managing director of their television company.



They also gave me some posh bath salts. I don't own a bath, but I appreciate it.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone! I'm tired and have to be up early tomorrow to go to Preston, so I'll keep this short, but Ace, you're right, I desperately need a haircut and beard trim, but yesterday was so hectic, I couldn't fit it into my busy schedule!

And what's with all the Richard-hate? I think he's a nice guy. Did you know he left school at 16 to pursue a career in journalism?

A triple bill of Zoomy

Stay glued to the telly all day tomorrow, fans. Five News at 11am on channel 5, Richard and Judy at 5pm on channel 4, Extraordinary Animals at 7:30pm back on channel 5 again.

It's been a busy day. I've spent the whole day emailing and phoning about TV shows (not just the ones listed above but also the Canadians I'm seeing on Thursday), memory competitions (Cambridge May 4, Derby May 24-25, let me know if you're interested - entry is free for first-timers, it's a fun day out and there might be prizes) and memory demonstrations (Preston on Wednesday, sandwiched between day trips to London). I'm worn out, and I've got three busy days to come.

One thing I've memorised for these uni demonstrations is all the FA Cup final results in history, and I'm crossing my fingers in hope that Bristol Rovers don't make it to the final this year. The other fifteen clubs still in the competition have all reached the final before, you see, so I won't have to associate new images with them for this year's final. Whereas if Bristol Rovers get to the final, I'll get them all mixed up with Bristol City (who, as any historian or memory expert knows, were runners-up in 1909) and/or Blackburn Rovers (who've been in more finals than I've had hot dinners today).

I use the one of my 2704 regular images that sounds most like each club, you see, so Bristol City are the pop group Bis, and Blackburn Rovers are 'bro', my brother (because Blackpool are the 'back' image, naturally), so I have no idea what image I would use for Bristol Rovers if I had to. Luckily, their chances of reaching the final are basically zero, but it still worries me.

Just enough to give your kids a treat

Did you know that Fry's Turkish Delight has significantly less fat than other chocolate bars? I might have heard it once, but I'd forgotten it when I bought one tonight, and only just remembered. So now I feel good about my low-fat lifestyle. Or I would, if I hadn't also bought a bag of Tangfastics.

The magic of the FA Cup and the internet

I watched Havant & Waterlooville play Liverpool today, thanks to the miracle of streaming video from ESPN's far east broadcasts. If the BBC had had the sense to show the game, I wouldn't have had to, but still, it pleases me to know that there really is no limit to what you can get on the internet if you look hard enough.

It was a great game too - a real who-says-the-magic-is-gone-from-the-F-A-Cup game. Actually, have you ever noticed that nobody ever actually says the magic has gone from the F A Cup, but everybody always makes a point of denying it? It's strange.

And why do I always want to refer to Havant as "Havant & Westfield"? I know the shopping centre in Derby is called the Westfield centre, but I'm sure I know of something with an "and Westfield" suffix, because it just sounds so familiar...

In other news, I'm informed that "Chimp Beats Memory Champion" has made the radio news in Toronto, Canada. It's nice to know that media coverage of all my achievements in the field of memory put together is going to fall far short of all the press I'll get for this thing. I can just tell that "lost to a monkey" is going to become even more widespread than that old chestnut "forgot to set his alarm clock".

And also, while I'm vaguely complaining about things, I've just watched the Friends episode with the following dialogue:

Joey - Why do you call him Gandalf?
Chandler - You know, Gandalf the Wizard!
Joey looks blank.
Chandler - Didn't you read Lord Of The Rings in high school?
Joey - I had sex in high school.

Last time I saw the episode, it was on E4's 5:00pm showing, and they cut out Joey's final line. I've just watched it again at 8:00pm, and that line was still edited out! You can't say 'sex' at 8pm? What is the world coming to?

And if you're going to cut out the punchline, why on earth would you leave the extensive setup intact?

The Book of Heroic Failures

Yes, as several of my readers have noticed, the Daily Mail finally picked up on the man versus monkey memory marvel and ran an article about it today. Channel 5 were supposed to be calling me to get a couple of soundbites to give to them, but either they didn't bother in the end or they didn't manage to catch up with me, so they just used snippets from next Tuesday's documentary. And the Sun ran a similar story by copying what the Mail had written, changing it slightly and passing it off as an original scoop. This is exactly the same thing that they did with an article about me and the world championships last year - I suspect that the Sun no longer employs any actual journalists.

Anyway, this has in turn piqued the interest of Richard and Judy, one of whose minions phoned me this afternoon to say they're thinking of previewing the documentary on next Tuesday's show, and might want me to come on and talk about it. This is interesting, because years ago, when I won the world memory championship, Richard and Judy made noises about wanting to talk to me and then eventually decided against it (possibly bumping me in favour of Aubrey, who was on the show around that time). If they do decide to put me on the show this time round, it will clearly show that losing a rigged contest of short-term memory against a chimpanzee is a much more impressive feat than winning a gruelling three-day memory competition against the rest of the world.

The funny thing is that I find myself making excuses about how I could have done as well as or better than Ayumu in the memory test if I hadn't been doing it for the first time in my life, and if we hadn't been using a flawed program where my hand obscured the numbers because the start button was in the middle of the screen, but when I'm thinking or saying all this, I completely forget that the opponent I'm talking about isn't even human. It's like, say, Daniel Tammet performing some memory feat and claiming that makes him the best in the world - my instinctive reaction is to acknowledge that Ayumu has done something impressive, but assert that I could do the same thing with a bit of work. I'm seeing him as a rival rather than an educated ape, and that really is pretty darn cool.

I look forward to the day when the world memory championship is contested by representatives of multiple species.

Memorable training

I'm really back in the groove of memory practice now - I've been doing lots of speed practice this week, I've created a few new journeys so I don't have to reuse them so often, and I'm going to take a break tomorrow so as to be fresh for some heavy long-discipline practice at the weekend.

This is the kind of routine I can follow when I get a job. Or if I get a job - there's an amazing scarcity of decent jobs in this area right now. Does nobody want a management accountant who's been on the telly? Or at least anybody who doesn't specify extensive experience of standard costing in their job spec? Seriously, who uses standard costing? I thought it was something that only exists in accounting exams! I didn't think it was something you could actually apply to a real company...

My Week In Media

I've been "tagged" by "Sam" and ordered to talk about what I've experienced in every possible medium over the last seven days. He suggested I could also tell us which media I've been watched/listened to/read in, but to my great shame, you've caught me in a slow week between starring in my own documentary and making a cameo in one about a chimp. Not so much as a newspaper article in the last seven days, to the best of my knowledge, although I have been being pestered at length by the Canadian Broadcasting Company, who are coming to film me next week.

Actually, I told them I wouldn't do one of the two things they wanted to film me doing, because they were starting to annoy me. I regret it now, because I've just remembered I've got a couple of friends in Canada who'd no doubt enjoy watching it.

But anyway, here's everything I can remember doing for the last week:

What I read

Probably within the last week, I finished re-reading The Green Mile, by Stephen King, which is one of his best, and always worth another look every couple of years once I've had time to forget all the little details. Then I moved on to Treasure Island, which I hadn't read since I was in school but had been meaning to buy and read again ever since I saw that they're performing it at the Derby Playhouse at the moment. It really is a fantastic book. Since finishing it, my bedtime reading has been selected bits of the complete works of Chaucer (the textual notes as much as the poetry - I love the intricate process of establishing a definitive text from all the widely varying manuscript readings. You just don't get that fun from writers who did their writing after the invention of moveable type).

In comics, last week's selection was The Umbrella Academy #5, probably the best new comic around at the moment, brilliantly written by Gerard Way and heartily recommended to anyone; Iron Man/Power Pack #3, latest in Marc Sumerak's wonderful kid-friendly superhero adventure in the classic style backed up by Chris Giarusso's hilarious Mini-Marvels strips (no Elephant Steve in this one, sadly), heartily recommended to anyone whose first superhero comic was the Power Pack backup strip in Star Wars weekly; and Penance: Relentless #4, which is frankly almost unreadable drivel and my only excuse for buying it is a sort of Thunderbolts completist syndrome that I really need to break myself of. I also bought this week's Beano today, since it was in a plastic bag and I couldn't flick through it in the shop like I normally do - it isn't much good. There's normally one or two entertaining bits in each issue, but the only strip of note this week is "Bash Street Zombies" by Kev Sutherland. His Bash Street Kids stories generally somehow fail to be as funny as they should be, but this one has a genuinely gigglesome bit with Cuthbert's comic rejuvenating machine that has an unfortunate side-effect of turning people into zombies.

What I watched

I haven't been watching much telly lately, actually. I watch the repeats of Friends on E4 every night (yes I do, Crispy - "lowbrow" indeed...) followed by repeats of The Simpsons on channel 4 and that's about it. Until it finished on Sunday I was watching quite a bit of the snooker - Stephen Lee (enormously fat) lost to Mark Selby (slim), which just makes my resolve to lose weight even firmer. I don't want to be the only 'sport' champion who's obese. Even darts players are positively skinny these days. And I watch the football highlights every Saturday and Sunday evening.

As for cartoons, it's a bit of a slow time for quality animated entertainment these days. It's a while since the American studios churned out a good, watchable adventure or comedy series for kids. In the field of very-small-children's entertainment, I have been enjoying "Timothy Goes To School" just lately. It's a by-the-numbers kind of semi-educational series, but they do make an effort with characterisation and humour above and beyond the call of duty for a show like that, which I do appreciate.

I also watched the first couple of minutes of Ski Sunday, just to see if the 'new direction' for the series really is as bad as it sounded. Yes, it is. If anything it's even worse. They decided to change it from a programme about ski competitions into Top Gear without the cars. Why they thought that would be a good idea is beyond me - see rubbish skier Graham Bell looking at mountains! Woo! And, despite the continuity announcer's assurance before the programme, the wonderful theme tune has been very badly remixed and mostly drowned out by helicopter noises and swooshing sound effects.

What I listened to

Again, not all that much. I've got out of the habit of listening to an album in an evening. Except for tonight - the best of REM is playing right now. It's "Orange Crush" at this exact moment, if you really need to know. I've maybe had another couple playing in the background this past week - Definitely Maybe by Oasis, and This Is The Life by Amy McDonald. I've also had Virgin Radio on from time to time. I'll listen to anything except The Geoff Show and the Saturday afternoon show where they interrupt the songs every time a goal is scored in any football match in the country.

What I surfed

Bits and pieces, here and there - Sam's aforementioned blog is one of the couple I check daily, Jemfy's is the other. I keep forgetting to read Samt's every day, but I've kept up with it when my brain permits.

Webcomics I read either daily or whenever they update: Newshounds, Something Happens, Ozy and Millie, Count Your Sheep, Achewood and Order Of The Stick.

I read the BBC News website, the forums for memory and othello competitions and anything else that springs to mind. I always like to read the comments people leave on this blog, of course - thanks in particular to those who suggested ways I could lose weight, but I don't think I'll be getting a pedometer (they click over if you shake them - I wouldn't be able to resist the temptation) or the fitness plan that comes with a disclaimer that some people say it could be harmful, tempting as that is.

What I’ve played

As I'm sure you know, I'm hugely disdainful of modern video game systems. In the past week, I've been playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my Mega Drive - the original game, Sonic 3 and the bonus game you get when you plug Sonic 1 into Sonic And Knuckles. Great stuff.

Online, I've been occasionally playing othello - I always play in the Saturday night tournament on kurnik while I'm watching Match Of The Day, and I've been doing quite well by my standards just lately. I've also been playing a bit of xiangqi/Chinese chess, and finding that I'm much worse at it now than I was a few years ago when I was playing semi-regularly. And I was always pretty terrible.

Well, I think that's enough details of my everyday life to be going on with. REM have moved on to Electrolite, so I've had five full songs play since I did the listened-to bit. It's a good thing I've got nothing else to be doing with my life, isn't it?

Speed cards

I've been practicing, but I don't think I've been practicing in the most intelligent way. What I should be doing is practicing taking the pack a bit slower, linking each location together, and seeing if I can get my time doing that down to around thirty seconds or so. If I could do a safe thirty-something seconds in competition, that would be enough to squish my opponents. But I prefer to practice doing it as fast as possible, leaving the individual locations isolated, which is riskier but significantly under 25 seconds most of the time.

I'm not a very professional kind of competitor. I can't stand doing slower-but-safer when I know I could be doing fast-and-probably-make-a-mess-of-things. Which is strange, because I was always good at egg-and-spoon races at school.

Lard Lad

This is, Blogger tells me, my 850th blog post. Which is a really huuuuuge number, and deserves a really huuuuuge topic, like how really huuuuuge I am. The weighing machine in Woolworth's is working again, and I weighed myself yesterday to find that I'm 12 stone 11.6 pounds now. This is just getting silly. It seems that ever since I decided to weigh myself three months ago, I've been getting fatter at a staggering rate.

Well, no more! Proper dieting, exercising, not stuffing my face, here we come! Thin Zoomy, they'll call me in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll even get one of those have-a-flat-stomach-in-one-day videos I occasionally see advertised. I'm not sure I'd like a flat stomach, but this weighing machine is annoying me. Either I'll lose weight or take a hammer to it, we'll see.

Appreciate me!

I've only just found out, but it seems that January 16th was Appreciate A Dragon Day. No, really, it was. Look it up on the internet. You can buy e-cards and everything. Why does nobody ever tell me about these things?

Well, it seems that tomorrow is National Hugging Day, and that 'national' here means 'applying to any and all nations', so I'm going to expect hugs.

Found on the internet

Yes, yes, I know I'm always scathing and rude about unimaginative people whose blogs consist of links to more interesting places on the web, but it's a slow news day, so I thought I'd share a couple of things that have caught my eye.

Did you know there's a campaign to erect a statue of Long John Silver in Bristol? I must say, I wholeheartedly approve. And not just because it would give lots of people a much-needed opportunity to dress up like pirates and say "Aharr, Jim lad" - it's high time one of the greatest literary characters in history got some recognition. As the Trust's website points out, he's an almost unique example in Victorian fiction of a positive role model for the disabled, and also a brilliantly complex character with a wonderful amorality that I think we all admire, and possibly the only example in 19th-century children's stories of a bad guy who not only gets away scot-free but is amply rewarded for his evil ways. I've always thought that Silver and his wife (an almost unique example in Victorian fiction of a strong, black, female character) were just crying out to be included in a flashback in Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Perhaps they still will, some day.

And while we're browsing the internet, might I direct your attention to this article? If there's one group of people who are always, without exception, wildly misrepresented in the press and the public consciousness, it's furries, and this piece is heartily recommended for anyone who thought "What, you mean people who dress up like animals and have sex?" when they read that word.

Something else

I seem to have done nothing but write about memory lately, so instead of lamenting about how I can't get back under 25 seconds in speed cards after not practicing for a while, I'll talk about something else for a change.

Um...

I suppose I could poke fun at the way the TV commentator (possibly Willie Thorne, I can't quite tell from the voice) didn't see a problem with using the phrase "it's a Chinese snooker" just now in his commentary on the match between Marco Fu and Ding Junhui. Isn't that actually an offensive term? It means a situation where there's nothing between the cue ball and object ball, but another ball immediately behind the cue ball, hampering cueing, and it became known as a Chinese snooker not because it happened in China once, but because it's 'backwards' from a normal snooker and thus stems from the perception that the Chinese do things in a stupid foreign way, not like us sensible English types. I'll complain to the BBC.

Or I could complain to Viz - an article in the latest issue has Richard Griffiths complaining that he's always typecast as a fat sixty-year-old man. '"I never seem to be considered to play any other sort of part, such as 20-year-old circus contortionists, jockeys or little girls," he added, before being removed from the stage by several burly firemen using a block and tackle.'

A while ago, I wrote a silly film review noting that one of the leading actors, a large, bearded man cast against type as a five-year-old girl, put in an impressive performance. If I'd put that one in my blog rather than scribbling it on the back of an envelope on a letter to my brother, I'd be complaining that Viz stole my joke, and possibly trying to sue them for millions of pounds.

The film had other problems, as I recall, caused by three of the four leading actors dying of natural causes the night before filming the final scene, forcing them to be replaced by life-size marionettes operated by the director hanging from the ceiling.

Or I could write about Wednesday's Torchwood, which I thought was entertaining enough, if pretty unexceptional. It was fun to see James Marsters snogging John Barrowman, though - I haven't checked up on this, but I bet there are a heck of a lot of fan fictions on the internet featuring that kind of scene.

Or possibly I could talk about the way the weighing machine in Woolworth's is broken, so I can't see whether I've lost weight this month. If I'd weighed myself this morning, I possibly would have done, but I've stuffed myself to ridiculous levels this afternoon for no good reason, so if the machine's fixed by tomorrow, I'll probably be heavier than ever.

Actually, whether the machine's fixed or not, I'll probably be heavier than ever. But if it's still broken, at least I won't know for sure.

Ooh, or I could talk about how I found a Nessie the Dragon cuddly toy in Woolworth's, for £7! Well, I had to buy the thing, didn't I? She sings when you squeeze her tummy! And there was just the one of them on the shelf, in a battered old box, that must have been lying at the back of the stockroom since Nessie's brief moment of popularity.

Or perhaps I could talk about the comic strip I'm drawing when I get a free moment (which is surprisingly rarely just lately) - another exciting adventure for the superhero fox kids you may recall from some time last year. It'll take me a while to get the thing finished, but I hope that when people see it, they'll say "Wow, your artistic skills really have improved! Way to go!"

Note that when I say "I hope", I actually mean "I insist, whether you really believe that or not." My ego is fragile, and needs gently massaging.

Or I could talk cartoons. I haven't done that in this blog for ages, and it's not because I don't like cartoons any more, it's just that I always felt I was adopting a show-offy kind of tone somehow, because I felt like I needed to explain a bit more about what I'm talking about than I do for memory or othello or things like that, when I know I have at least some readers who know what I'm talking about. But I still vaguely intend to write at ridiculous length about Thundercats some time, and just maybe I'll get round to it.

Or I could lament about the shortage of jobs around here at the moment, even the scummy short-term jobs that I might resort to just to get back in the office for a while. But it's hard to write very much about the fact that something doesn't exist, so maybe I'll wait till a temporary management accountant job comes along and I start debating whether to take it or not.

Nah, it's no good, I can't think of anything to write about apart from memory stuff. I'm planning to do more long-discipline practice this weekend when I can in good conscience unplug the phone without cutting off job offers and things, although I'm in two minds as to whether it might be better to work on speed instead, since I know I'm not as fast as I should be. We'll see what I feel like.

Also, Online Memory Challenge on Sunday! Not too late to sign up! Go on, it'll be a laugh!

Professor Perfect

Well, as I briefly said last night, yesterday's jaunt down to Plymouth was pretty successful, all in all. This demonstration was hosted by the uni's psychology society, with help from the head of school, Professor Tim Perfect, whose name I'm sure I will eventually stop giggling at. Professor Perfect (heehee), in fact, wants the three of us memory men to be subjects of some kind of psychology experiment in the future, investigating what makes us tick, which might be entertaining.

But as for what we were actually there for, the demo had a small audience of ten people, making it a perfect warmup for Preston, where there will be a couple of hundred, and we all did our various memory tricks without any real problems. I thought we came across as rather awkward and mumbly at the start, but we'd warmed up into professional-sounding performers/lecturers in memory techniques by the end of the hour. None of the students had seen The Mentalists, or my Blue Peter "performance", but they were all hugely impressed by my badge. Which promptly broke, and had to be wedged into my hatband for most of the demonstration. But it's fixed again now, thanks to superglue.

Everybody seemed to enjoy it - Professor Perfect (titter) and his less interestingly-named colleague had to leave half-way through for a meeting, but the students all stayed to the end without looking bored, commented enthusiastically on what they'd seen and all showed interest in the upcoming university memory competition. So it looks like we'll be able to carry through our plans of a competition in each university we visit, followed by a bigger final championship to decide the best student memoriser in the country. James Paterson and I spent the lengthy train journey home planning the impressive memory competition society we'll form when we win the lottery, and that'll be a really great thing, I assure you, but what's actually going to happen seems pretty groovy too. We're sure to bolster the ranks of memory competitors, and people who've heard of memory competitions, in this country by a huge amount.

Also, yet another person recognised me in Derby today. I had no idea so many people watched channel 5!

Memo demo

It all went pretty well, really. I'd go into more detail, but I was up early and it's late now, and I'm going to bed when Torchwood's finished. I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Plymouth ho!

We're going to Plymouth tomorrow, to do a memory demonstration at the uni, as I think I've mentioned before. It'll involve me trying that menu memory performance for the first time ever, so the students can look forward to a Blue Peter-style shambles. I bet they all saw Blue Peter, actually, and will jeer and throw things at me as soon as they see me. Maybe I'll wear the Brazilian Mystery Cloak and keep the hood over my head.

Still, another guy stopped me in the street to talk Mentalists with me today! And also, Alexei the German journalist let me know that his article about me appeared in the Badische Neueste Nachrichten and Weser-Kurier last week. So not quite the neueste Nachrichten, but I have pdf files I can send to anyone who wants them and isn't in a position to get last week's local German papers.

Scuse me, mate, weren't you on TV?

Yes, it's doubleplusofficial now, I'm a celebrity! A complete stranger recognised me on the street and congratulated me on having a great memory! His name's Kasim, and I'd like to thank him if he's reading this (which in all fairness he probably isn't, he didn't say The Mentalists was his favourite programme ever and it's made him want to know everything about me, or anything like that).

It was actually quite scary - the rest of the time I was in town I was going around thinking "There are people out there who know me even though I don't know them. If I pick my nose or rob a bank or something, even if nobody I know is around, it might be headline news in the Derby Evening Telegraph - Local Memory Man Picks Nose, Robs Bank". It's frightening, and I don't think I can deal with the intense public scrutiny. I know now how David Beckham feels.

As one book is lost, another is written

Well, I had the time but not the inclination to do an hour numbers practice today - feeling a bit burnt out, so I decided to rest my brain. But I'm still optimistic about being able to keep up with some pretty heavy training and getting back to world championship fitness, mentally speaking.

Apart from that, I started re-reading The Green Mile by Stephen King, which I've got in the original six mini-books it first came out as, only to realise half way through book 2 that I can't find the sixth one. This is really annoying, because I've got a bookcase now, and while it holds somewhat less than half of my books, the others are all stacked up very nicely on top of my cupboard, so losing books should be a thing of the past. It's probably under my bed, which means lugging the heavy thing around to find it (not to mention risking angering the monsters down there).

Still, on the other hand, How To Be Clever is only needing four more chapters and an introduction before it's finished off! Admittedly those four chapters are the ones that are barely started or in one case not-at-all started, so it'll take some more work, but there really is light at the end of the tunnel now. Actually, just getting this 'first draft' finished will be such an achievement, I might not even bother with the hassle of sending it to publishers or agents. That would all be a bit of an anticlimax, don't you think?

Follow the Sour Bee

An extra early-morning blog post today, just because I feel the need to chronicle the cool dream I had last night. Actually, this was just a segment of a longer and more involved epic kind of dream, but basically I was in my bedroom with a number of other people (who I think were my brother and two embodiments of different aspects of my brother's personality) and an archaic video game system. Which malfunctioned, and sucked us into a magical other world.

There, in a scene that was overplayed as if it was an episode of a sitcom, we were summoned to the throne room of a king, who informed us that he had two brothers, one of them a twelve-foot-tall giant and the other a six-inch-tall Tom Thumb type, and that he required us to go on a quest to kill his brother and save the kingdom. I asked him to clarify which of his brothers he wanted us to kill, noting that I wasn't willing to go on a quest with such easily misinterpreted instructions for a king who clearly had people killed at the drop of a hat, and he responded "Follow the Sour Bee, and it will guide you to the one of my brothers whom I want you to kill."

From somewhere behind the throne emerged an ordinary bumblebee, except that it was green and black instead of yellow and black, which buzzed around us. However, then the giant brother came along and squished the king on his throne with one lazy swipe of his giant club. He then sat down on top of his splatted brother and looked at us, whereupon we all swore eternal loyalty to him.

The thing that really tickles me about this dream for some reason is the Sour Bee. I'm delighted with my subconscious for dreaming this thing up, and I need to include it in all future stories that I write, just so that it can fulfil its true potential.

I really am a mentalist

Woo, check out the memory champion, back in training! Results of a good day's work - half-hour binary 3550, hour cards 24 packs (attempting 30), speed numbers 256 (best of two attempts). So obviously I can do significantly better in all three, but if I got those scores at a world championship there wouldn't be many who'd beat me. And more importantly, this is the first time in a very, very long time that I've done so much memorising in one day. If I can do the same kind of thing tomorrow (hour numbers, spoken numbers and speed cards), I will be deliriously happy with myself. I haven't done a full weekend practice session for ages and ages, and there was a time, many years ago, when I was doing them nearly every weekend. Wonder if I can get back into that kind of mood?

It's all the talking about memory I've done lately. So keep talking memory competitions with me, people, whenever you see me! And speaking of memory competitions, let me just put in another plug for the Online Memory Challenge, now that I know I have blog-readers who are training in memory but who I don't necessarily talk to. The next OMC is on Saturday 20th January, at 10am GMT - very early morning if you're in America, but we have to give the Australians a chance to take part in these things too. The OMC really is an ideal way to add some variety to your practice, to meet other competitors of all ability ranges, to test yourself and not have to mark your own papers, and to have some fun! Come along and join in!

Mentalists follow-up

Thanks for all the comments, one and all! Since practically everyone who commented on last night's entry included a question, here are the answers:

Lewis: Yep, I'm the only person mad enough to have one image for each pair of cards. I'm pretty sure it's the way of the future, though, and a few other people are experimenting with it right now. Incidentally, do I know you? I'm not aware that I know anyone called Lewis, except the Derby County players Lewis Price and Eddie Lewis, and I don't actually know them, I just memorised their names this morning.

Ian: I'm next on the telly on January 29th, co-starring with those loveable memory monkeys. And you can rest assured that I'm going to train hard and beat Gunther this year! Definitely!

Mike: I just don't like pain au chocolat. I'm very much in favour of chocolate and don't have any particular objection to bread, but put them together and serve it to me for a French breakfast and the thought makes me ill. Give me a bread and butter pudding made with stale white bread any day of the week. Incidentally, I have three regular blog-commenters called Mike - I can usually deduce which one is commenting by what they say (subtle clues such as the fact that only one of the Mikes I know cohabits with an Emma), perhaps you guys could give me more of a clue? Mike D, Mike C and other Mike C, for example?

Ace: I just don't like pain au chocolat. But Ashley can certainly have an autograph, if I can give him a cuddle.

Mike C: I've known you longer than the other Mike C, so you're "Mike C" instead of "other Mike C". No, there isn't a website about me, and I'm not going to make one either. Why would I want one? To tell the world I'm great? The world already knows that!

Katy: Thanks! Here's a summary of things people have said to me about the documentary - "I especially loved Zoomy's grandma, she's so sweet", "your gran is cool", "your gran came across as a lovely wee wifie". I don't know why they bothered to put me, Ed and Gunther in the film at all...

Sam: Was I one of the pillocks on there?

Well, I was on Radio Derby this morning, they invited me on as a sort of follow-up to last night's TV. Much to my satisfaction, they didn't ask me to memorise cards for once, but instead gave me a load of Derby County statistics instead - all the current squad with their numbers, all their results this season, and Robbie Savage's disciplinary record. And even more to my satisfaction, I memorised them all perfectly! Even the names! I'm very happy with myself!

And what's more, this weekend, there will be Training, with a capital T! I've been doing well this week, I've done a half-hour cards, half-hour numbers and half-hour binary, plus a whole lot of speed cards, over the last five days. I think I might be able to try some hour numbers and cards without my mind wandering. If I can do a real pile of practice this weekend, I'll know I'm back on song.

"Bet he's got no problems remembering where he left the car keys"

Bless her, that's what the continuity announcer on Channel 5 has just said about me. Gosh, I've never heard that before. And if I had car keys, believe me, I would lose them. "The Mentalists" is on after the break and I thought I'd write my blog while I watch it, or at least until I can't stand to see and hear myself acting like an eejit any more and turn it off...

"There's a small group of people across the world whose brains harbour an amazing ability..." Not a great start. I was hoping for a "this is something anyone can do" approach. Heehee, ooh, fun footage, though! Gunther's house!

Ooh, my house! Tumby house, that is! Ooh, me in the used-to-be-the-dining-room-and-is-now-the-kitchen! Heehee, me with the straw hat! Ugh, I'm ugly. And my voice is horrible. Argh, I always sound so pretentious when I'm talking to the camera! I don't normally sound like that in real life, do I? Also, I'm fat.

Fantastic that we get to see the house, anyway, I can show this to my brother. Hee! They spelt "Highley" wrong! That'll upset the people at the leisure centre! Hmm, artful camera angles to disguise the fact that only five people turned up for the UK championship... Yay, my Zoom-Zoom T-shirt!

Ooh, clever, they matched me telling my spoken number story to a shot of the answer paper - and correctly synchronised the images I'm saying with the numbers as the camera pans across! Nice one, Nick!

"Booyeah!"

Heehee, James Kemp looking impressed in the background. Wow, first advert break already? This is a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I wish I hadn't scuppered the ending by losing the world championship now.

I bet Alan Hansen doesn't really shop at Morrisons. He's just lying because they give him money. Big fibber. Although I suppose he must do his shopping somewhere, so there's a chance he really does. Unless he's rich enough to have someone do his shopping for him, of course.

I'm recording this for my brother (who's out doing something more exciting tonight) but also for any foreigners who want to see it and can arrange to get a copy from me. They'll get to see all these British adverts and experience a whole different culture.

Come on, put The Mentalists back on! Ah, that's better. Who the heck is this reciting poetry? Oh, Ed, of course. Heehee. Ooh, is that the field where we got lost on the way to his party? Yep, there's stately Cooke Manor. God, Ed, people are going to take you seriously when you say things like this. The quality of the terrain, indeed...

Yay, Ed's dad gets an interview too! "We thought he might have finished with the world memory and get a job or something..."

Ooh, is this going to be Grandma's moment of glory? Oh, thanks, Nick, let's say "Ben's parents separated when he was nine..." that's important information for everyone to know. Yay, Grandma looks great on TV! She's watching it right now with all her friends. Heehee, thanks, Grandma, "He doesn't tend to brag about his achievements." Oh, fantastic, Dad's photo too! Hope that's the end of the Pridmore family soap opera.

Oh god, Tony Buzan with a kendo sword. He wanted this documentary to be called "Warriors Of The Mind". "Some people call me a guru, you know..." Good old Tony.

His 92 books on the brain... Actually, I thought the 92 included his books of poetry, don't they? Say what you like about Tony, he's one heck of a snappy dresser. I've always loved his clothes.

Ahh, I remember that taxi ride to Central Tonight in the pouring rain. Happy days.

Hey, you know, I'm really enjoying this. Excellent - "Useless is what would describe what I do..."

Ahh, German championships! Whoa, wait a second. "He's certainly beatable, although he hasn't shown much sign of it over the last few years." I said that about Clemens and they edited it to make it seem like I was talking about Gunther!

Heehee, me getting stressed after dropping the pack of cards at the end. Classic.

Ooh, Gunther's house is nice. Is that his giant chess set? And I'm sorry, I refuse to believe that Gunther and Michaela practice like that, in English yet, when there aren't any cameras around...

Eww, yuck, prawns. "Cutting onions with ze big knife..." Heehee, this is funny stuff.

Ahh, more adverts. Woo, we're half way through and it hasn't made me look particularly stupid yet. Possibly I was worried about nothing.

All that M&S posh food looks horrible. Pain au chocolat bread and butter pudding? Yuck! Now, my dad used to make a great bread and butter pudding.

Too many adverts on telly these days. You know, it occurs to me that you'll need to be watching the documentary while you're reading this blog, or it won't make any sense. Ah well, who cares?

Here we go, Ed and Lukas high-altitude training! You've already told us Ed is the world number 17, people, you only get 45 minutes, don't duplicate information! "Every year we come to the mountains where Lukas lives as a goatherd and train ourselves for the competition..." Heehee. Bet they follow this up with me doing karaoke and getting drunk. Hope they do, anyway.

Wow, nice scenery. Nice camerawork, too! Kudos to Nick, if he did that bit himself. Wow, Ed looks like the real guru, up on top of a mountain. And chopping wood!

Heehee, Gunther's got a lot more trophies than me. And he keeps them in a cabinet.

Yay, "Ben has his own approach to last-minute training" and us getting drunk and karaokeing. Wait, we have me talking about the upcoming German championship made to look like I'm talking about the worlds? More trickery!

Oooooooh, Bahrain. Such a cool place. I hope we get to go there again. Heehee, me with the hankie on my head, foolishly going out in the midday sun. "I'm sweating like whatever the halal equivalent of a pig is..." Hope nobody finds that offensive.

Team China! We really, really need matching T-shirts next year for Britain.

Dr Yip and his Oxford English Dictionary. There should have been more of him there.

Ah, the drama of the abstract images. Ooh, the excitement of the competition! This is actually put together very nicely. "Gunther's mind games pay off" is a bit misleading, but never mind.

That footage wasn't of me starting to memorise binary digits. That was hour numbers. Fakery.

Did I mishear that? Did I say "The Blue Beetle"? Why would I have said that? He's not one of my images? And no, Gunther hasn't been shaken by my performance, he was expecting me to get that kind of score.

Oh, excellent, I was hoping Boris would get a cameo. Nice speed-stacking!

Aargh, hour cards. What a horrible disaster that was. Do we have to see this? Can't we pretend that I got a big score and won the world championship?

Still fun to watch, though. Those aren't my cards, despite what the narrator said. They're German cards.

Heh, "Ben, ludicrously stupidly, tried to do 36 packs of cards..." Nice one, Ed! Actually, it wasn't because I was going for so many that I went wrong. My brain just wasn't in the right place, that afternoon, and I could tell from the start that it wasn't sinking in.

More adverts. Nearly finished. Do you think I'm going to win the world championship? I bet I am. Hey, wasn't that Lynne Slater from EastEnders on that Take A Break advert?

I was hoping there'd be an appropriate advert that was connected in some way to me or to memory, but they're all for things I'm not interested in at all, like Jamie Oliver.

Hmm, answer that message from Crispy or keep blogging? Keep blogging. Gunther and Michaela are training in their hotel room. "Do you ever relax?" "Sometimes, but very rarely."

Ed is actually good at explaining what's going on for establishing shots. I didn't really do any of that. Oh god, he's sounding serious again.

Ah, speed cards. Turn away now if you don't want to see me make a fool of myself...

Sigh. I suck.

My beard doesn't look as grey on TV as it does in real life, though. That's a good thing.

God, I can't believe I messed up the speed cards. It's so embarrassing. Heehee, me and Phil look like siamese twins there.

Well, Gunther deserved it, anyway. Next year it'll be a different story. Oh, I basically said that on the interview, too.

Wow, this has been a great documentary. Oh, the narrator was Richard Vranch. Should have recognised the name. He's a great pianist too, you know.

Well, that's that. I liked it! I hope it was entertaining for the people watching it who'd never heard of me or memory.

It could be you

Yesterday I found two Thunderball lottery tickets for tonight's draw, lying on the floor in the shopping centre in Derby. I was looking forward to a moral dilemma when one of them won the jackpot and I had to decide between keeping all the money to myself or finding the person who bought and lost them. However, they didn't win a penny. I feel doubly disappointed.

It'll make a good sequence

I'm in two minds. Should I watch 'The Mentalists' on Thursday night so I know what people are talking about when they jeer at me on the street the following day, or should I miss it and avoid the horror of hearing my horrible voice, seeing my horrible face and witnessing a documentary making me out to be some kind of weirdo entirely different from the kind of weirdo that I really am? I'm pretty sure that you can't sum up my life in 45 minutes, so I don't think I'm going to like it, however well-made and flattering it might be...

On the other hand, I do miss being followed around by a cameraman urging me to do things that I would never normally do, on the grounds that "it'll make a good sequence". Maybe I'll see if I can persuade someone else to make a documentary about me, this time about accountants, or othello players, or people with unusually long toes. I don't think there's ever been a documentary about any of those sub-groups of society, and let's face it, if Channel 5 will show a documentary about memorisers, they'll show a documentary about anything.

Hey, maybe I could become a director, and follow someone else around with a camera all day! It looks like a fun thing to do, when you're not dealing with a stroppy weirdo who doesn't want to be in a documentary in the first place.

Sissons Scissor Sharpening

"I don't like to have to say this to you, lads," Mr Sissons said to the three women who worked for him at his scissor-sharpening stall on Bolton market, "but you've probably noticed that business has been a little slack recently. We live in an age when people just don't seem to need their scissors sharpened as much as they used to. I don't know why, I think it's something to do with the internet. And it doesn't help that those other two scissor-sharpening stalls opened up on either side of ours and started charging less than a quarter of what we charge for the same service. But the long and short of it is that we've only had one customer in the last eight years, and she only came here to ask if we'd seen her lost dog."

"What are you getting at, Mr Sissons?" asked Valerie.

"Well, I'm afraid that I simply can't afford to employ three full-time staff any more. Unless you can think of a better alternative, I shall have to sell the lot of you into slavery in order to pay the rent on the stall for another week."

Roberta, who had an NVQ in business administration, suggested "Perhaps we could diversify the business? Start selling scissors as well as sharpening them?"

"No, no, that wouldn't work at all," Mr Sissons said with a shake of the head. "I have a terrible fear of scissors, and while I can just about tolerate having them in close proximity to me for as long as it takes to sharpen them, I couldn't bear to have a stock of them on this market stall. It would drive me out of my mind!" He shuddered at the very thought.

"Maybe you could admit to that woman that you stole her dog, and you've still got it at your house now?" Dolores said. "She might pay a reward, and to be honest I've always been a little concerned about your habit of stealing people's pets. I think it might be illegal."

"Nonsense," said Mr Sissons with an impatient wave of the hand. "If people can't protect their pets from thieves, they don't deserve to own them. Likewise with televisions and jewellery. No, there's nothing else for it, the slave trader will be here in five minutes, put these manacles on and try to look like hard workers."

Just then, a man came up to the counter and asked "I say, do you sharpen scissors, by any chance? I have a rare pair of diamond-encrusted gold scissors which, being made of gold and thus hugely inferior to ordinary steel ones, need frequent sharpening. I'll pay a thousand pounds a week for you to keep them sharp."

"Eh? What? Scissors? No, we don't sharpen scissors," Mr Sissons said, distractedly. "No, wait! Yes, we do sharpen scissors! I got confused there for a moment..."

But the man had already left, with a disappointed look on his face. "Blast," Mr Sissons said. "I just don't understand why my business isn't more successful. It's the internet, I'm sure of it."

Remember!

Ah, there's nothing like sitting around talking memory for a couple of hours to get the old motivation running again! Did a half-hour cards this afternoon with nearly no mind-wandering, and I think I got a perfect 18 packs (although I haven't checked them yet). And this is despite having a pint of Foster's at lunchtime!

Hmm, maybe it wasn't the morning's discussion with the Jameses, maybe it was the beer. Perhaps getting drunk is the secret to a good memory? I'll have to experiment further. But I'm pretty sure it was the conversation. I was actually in the mood to follow it up with a late-night half-hour-numbers session, but then I got chatting on the internet for, well, two or three hours. But the point is, I'm still in the mood to memorise, and tomorrow, when there will be fewer distractions, I think I'm gonna do some more! Woohoo!

Black tongue

I do love black jacks. The aniseed chews, not the playing cards. I haven't had them for ages, but I bought a pack yesterday and now I'm hopelessly addicted to the things. It's no wonder I'm so big and fat, is it?

Anyway, James and James are coming round tomorrow to run through our amazing memory presentation for the unis. What we're doing, and I don't think I've really explained in this blog before, is putting on a performance demonstrating feats of memory, explaining something about techniques, in conjunction with sending out a 'memory manual' to all these eager young students, then organising university memory competitions. It should be a lot of fun, and if you're a student and you're reading this, go and ask your university whether we're coming or whether they didn't reply to us (it was the psychology department who got the emails/letters).

I should point out that it's James Paterson who had the idea and who has done the enormous amount of work on this whole project, ably assisted by James Paterson. I'm basically just tagging along in the hope of impressing some impressionable young minds with my collection of trophies and accolades and thus helping the Jameses recruit new competitors to the exciting world of 'memory sports'.

Neville Neville

One of the central gimmicks of "How To Be Clever" is that it has a piece of useless trivia at the bottom of each page. So I've been scouring the dark recesses of my memory and bookcase for interesting little-known facts, preferably ones that can't be found on the internet (which is increasingly hard these days, but I'd like to be able to claim that my book contains not just information that's actually true, but that can't be found on Wikipedia!)

But then tonight while idly reading up on football I come across the hugely interesting fact that the father of footballers Gary and Phil Neville is called Neville Neville. And this is, naturally enough, extremely well-known to everyone except me. So I can't put it in the book, but it's nice to know that while I'm working on sharing my fascinating obscure knowledge with the world and deriding the internet, the internet is sharing its fascinating knowledge back with me. Heehee, Neville Neville. What a great name.

Ask me what I've been doing all day

What have I been doing all day, you say? Working on "How To Be Clever", of course! I feel all industrious and successful. Even though I've only got as far as getting three chapters and most of a fourth up to absolute-finished-polished-first-draft stage. Heck, at this rate I might even be in a position to let someone look at it some time soon.

I'm currently also playing in an othello tournament on kurnik, and I just had a 31-31 draw. I don't think that's ever happened to me before.

He's the one who knows the Mysterons' game

Gerry Anderson night on BBC4, and I'm watching the first episode of Captain Scarlet. Featuring those wonderful Spectrum Pursuit Vehicles in which the driver faces backwards and sees the road ahead on a computer screen. I've always been impressed by how sensationally pointless this innovation is.

Anyway, my road to fame and glory continues apace - the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation want to include me in a memory documentary. I had resolved to do more actual memory championships and training and less documentaries, but I figure it'll be okay if I don't actually have people following me around at competitions and pestering me in the couple of months beforehand. And Canada is a place I've always vaguely wanted to go, so this will make the people there like me in case I ever get round to visiting.

Best thing since sliced bread

With my usual impressive grasp of advance planning, I realised this morning that I didn't have any food in the house, and unless some shops were open, I wasn't going to be able to eat anything until tomorrow. Luckily, though, Sainsbury's was open (poor Sainsbury's staff, don't even get New Year's Day off work), so the danger of starving to death was averted. However, they didn't have any sliced bread, unless you count a few loaves of unpleasant-looking, rather dated wholemeal stuff, so I bought an unsliced loaf from the still-warm, fresh-from-the-bakery section.

I disapprove of unsliced bread. What is this, the dark ages? Really, I'm old-fashioned enough just buying sliced bread - the trendy young people these days don't make their own sandwiches, they buy them ready-made from overpriced coffee shops and things. Also, I didn't think to buy a breadknife while I was in the supermarket, so cutting it is going to be fun (haven't tried it yet, but I'll need to for breakfast tomorrow).

Apart from that, I've done stuff today. All related to the first of our university memory demonstrations, which is coming up soon, in Plymouth. Which should be fun, and really merits its own blog entry, not a footnote to a bread-based rant. Maybe tomorrow.

They're gonna put me in the movies

Woo! This is the first time one of my occasional TV appearances has merited a namecheck in the Radio Times! I really must be famous! Although I don't get to be in the picture at the top of the column. And Kate Moss's documentary is five minutes longer than mine. And I'm not one of the 'choice' selections for the day in RT. I'm offended. I'll complain to my agent and manager and drug dealer. Well, actually, I'll just sit here complaining to my blog and enjoying a sherbet fountain.

Anyway, 2008 beckons! Tomorrow is the dawn of a new productive era of Zoomy! There'll be writing and memorising and achieving and weight loss! Sherbet fountains are low fat, right?

Cross my palm with golden oldies

A train of thought today led me to think "I'm pretty sure I own a pack of tarot cards, somewhere. Perhaps I should find them and read my fortune for the year ahead, and write about the results in my blog. And even if I don't find them, I'm sure to find something blogworthy while I'm looking through all my old stuff..."

Well, I never realised I own such a lot of rubbish. Really, I need to throw some things away. The most entertaining things I turned up in the box of junk that sits next to my bed were a couple of old music cassettes - Kid Jensen's Favourite Chart Breakers and The California Raisins Sing The Hit Songs. There was a time, when I first got a walkman back in the late eighties, when the California Raisins tape formed the entirety of my music collection. I can't remember where it came from, presumably it was a present since I can't imagine going into a shop and thinking "Wow, I really must buy a California Raisins tape!" But you never know. I was a very strange child.

Kid Jensen's Chart Breakers, on the other hand, definitely came free with a Rubik's Magic puzzle (or possibly the puzzle came free with the tape - the pair of them together cost around 50p, anyway), bought in the Wise Owl drug store (and general junk shop) in Boston, at some point after spring 1987, which is when the eight hits in question were breaking the charts. Since I know you won't be able to live without knowing what Kid Jensen's particular favourites were at this point, here's the running order:

Pepsi & Shirlie - "Heartache" (entered chart Jan. 1987, highest chart position 2)
Johnny Hates Jazz - "Shattered Dreams" (entered chart Apr. 1987, highest chart position 5)
Fine Young Cannibals - "Ever Fallen In Love" (entered chart Mar. 1987, highest chart position 9)
Boy George - "Everything I Own" (entered chart Mar. 1987, highest chart position 1)
Five Star - "The Slightest Touch" (entered chart Apr. 1987, highest chart position 4)
Blow Monkeys - "It Doesn't Have To Be This Way" (entered chart Jan. 1987, highest chart position 5)
Living In A Box - "Living In A Box" (entered chart Mar. 1987, highest chart position 5)
Mel & Kim - "Respectable" (entered chart Feb. 1987, highest chart position 1)

Those descriptions are all you get on the inlay, there's no commentary from the Kid explaining why they're his favourite chart breakers, or anything like that. All eight songs, in fact, are rather good ones. I was thinking I could have a laugh about some song being considered anybody's favourite, but they're all quite nice, you can listen and sing along to them. So I thought I'd look up the singers on the internet and see what they're doing now.

According to this Wham fan site, which is the first one you get when you type 'Pepsi and Shirlie' into Google but hasn't been updated since 2001, Pepsi sings backing vocals for Geri Halliwell, and Shirlie is married to Martin Kemp out of Spandau Ballet and "London's smash soap opera The Eastenders". And apparently Pepsi and Shirlie's dancing was a crucial part of Wham's success. If you say so.

According to this Johnny Hates Jazz site, "there is no current news regarding the groups activities or any solo-projects that I am aware of." Good to know.

This VH1 website says that Fine Young Cannibals Dave Cox and David Steele continue to work together under various names, without adding any more detail, "while Roland Gift's hoped-for film career never quite took off."

Boy George is still vaguely in the public eye, I think - the ultimate homepage dedicated to him says that he'll be in Genoa Italy for the new year's eve. Whether he's performing there or just holidaying isn't clear.

The first result on Google for 'Five Star' is Five Star Professional Ranges, which is far more entertaining to me than knowing what they're doing now. However, I remembered that one of them was called Delroy, looked him up and it seems he's got an IMDb page. All the cool people have them nowadays.

The Blow Monkeys have apparently reformed recently, although a cursory internet search reveals absolutely nothing about them except websites mentioning their couple of singles in the eighties. I'm sorry, people, but if the first page of a google search for your name doesn't give me a fan site with news updates, you're not going to hold my attention. Their lead singer was called Doctor Robert, though, which is a very cool name.

The lead singer of Living In A Box, Richard Darbyshire has his own website that says he's giving one-to-one songwriting lessons in West London "in a bid to help younger artists to reach their goals". How nice of him. Marcus Vere, wonderfully, writes songs for the "Here comes a..." series of children's DVDs. Drummer Anthony Critchlow might be a sculptural lighting designer, or an associate in the litigation department of Bell, Rosenborg & Hughes LLP, or else he hasn't done anything in the last twenty years worthy of a mention on the internet.

Mel & Kim, whose hit "Respectable" was my favourite of Kid Jensen's favourites, I can probably write about without looking them up. One of them died young and I think the other was on Big Brother or something. Let's see... Kim Appleby's clearly still alive, so it must have been her. She has a website that says she's released a new song but doesn't mention Big Brother, so perhaps she wasn't on it after all. I still loved "Respectable", though.

David "Kid" Jensen is still a DJ on some obscure radio station, I think.

Puppet show

Something I could have blogged about yesterday if I hadn't decided to be all me me me with the resolutions is the Weakest Link puppet special that was on last night. I'd actually heard about this during my Blue Peter adventure, chatting with someone who had worked on it and was telling me all about the technical difficulties of making a Weakest Link show with puppets (the walk of shame is obviously tricky to arrange). And no, I can't remember her name.

Soo was obviously going to win, though - she's always had more brains than all the other puppets on children's TV put together (except Sooty, of course, but Soo has the advantage of being able to talk. Although Sooty answering questions by whispering in Anne Robinson's ear would have been good.) Actually, I always had something of a crush on Soo. She's got a really nice voice, don't you think?

Jelly and Jackson had the funniest ad-libs, though. I'm going to have to watch The Story Makers now - I really admire puppeteers who can get into their characters like those guys obviously can.

Come the resolution, you'll be the first against the wall

It's the time of year when people resolve to do things and then don't do them. So I thought I should join in the fun, since there are rather a lot of things I need to do. So, because I'm twelve times better than most people, I'm going to make New Month Resolutions that I want to achieve before January is out. And I'm publicly posting them a few days early in case any of my loyal readers want to suggest further resolutions or refinements to existing ones. So here we go:

1) Get the amazing memory feats prepared for those uni demonstrations we're going to do. This way we'll avoid any Blue Peter-style fiascos.

2) Get a job. Unfortunate but unavoidable - if I'm not gainfully employed by around the end of March, I will be destitute.

3) Get that machine in Woolworth's to tell me I weigh less than 11 stone 10.2 pounds with a B.M.I. value of less than 24.9. By fair means or reprogramming.

4) Get that damn book of mine written. Seriously.

5) Develop magical powers of some kind. Not related to memory.

Commercial break

There's a thing on the BBC News website saying that that advert with the drumming gorilla was the highlight of the advertising world in 2007. Really? I mean, it was okay, but it wasn't anything special. And until I read the article I didn't have the faintest idea that it was an advert for Cadbury's, so it's really not achieved its basic aim, anyway.

The coolest adverts of the year have been those home-made-looking ones for some phone company, no idea which one, or that one with squillions of musical instruments all in a line playing a catchy tune. Which could be advertising toilet paper as far as I know. If I ever end up in charge of arranging an advert for whatever company I'm working for, I'll insist that it uses the brand name in a catchy, memorable slogan that's the core of the advert. And no drumming gorillas.

I'm an actor, a mentalist and a psychological specimen!

Wow, I haven't googled myself for ages, but I didn't expect to come up with so many wonderful discoveries in one session!

Okay, number one - I've got my own IMDb page courtesy of my appearance on The Panel! This is the grooviest thing ever! I've always thought it would be good to get myself an Equity card and have a small speaking part on The Bill or something along those lines. You know, just for the experience. And if you're on IMDb, that practically makes you a real actor, doesn't it?

Number two - not that anybody at Channel 5 or Special Edition has mentioned it to me, but it seems the documentary "The Mentalists" is on Channel 5 on Thursday January 10, at 8:00pm. "Documentary following accountant Ben Pridmore in his bid to become the World Memory Champion. The film follows Pridmore on a journey from the UK to Germany and Bahrain to compete against 'warriors of the mind' from three continents. Along the way, he encounters an array of eccentric characters, including a blue-blooded Austrian Count, 'mind guru' Tony Buzan, and a latter-day Renaissance man who lists 'inventing a new colour' as one of his works.". I confidently expect it to make me look like some kind of freak, and I urge everyone reading this not to watch it.

Number three - I don't know exactly what an A.P. Psychology course is, but they see fit to publish their homework schedules online, and check out what they were doing a couple of weeks ago! On Thursday December 13, brilliantly as part of the day themed around both memory and forgetting, students are instructed to spend five minutes watching "the amazing memory of Ben Pridmore" (aka my Central Tonight appearance). I'm on a syllabus! My god, it doesn't get cooler than this!

Ho ho ho, merry Christmas!

What could be more appropriate for the festive season than six consecutive episodes of Father Ted (not including the Christmas special) on More4 tonight? Well, quite a lot of things could, but I don't care. It's funny. Happy Christmas, everyone! Have a great day!

Once you pop, you can't stop!

Much as I love my grandma, she labours under the mistaken impression that I don't eat enough. So whenever I come round, she plies me with cakes and goodies non-stop until I'm fit to burst. She also routinely tells me I've lost weight, even though I've got documented proof that I haven't from that machine in Woolworth's.

She also gave me a big tube of Pringles (35% extra free, party size!) and a pack of jaffa cakes to take home, just to keep me going until my next visit because I can't be trusted to eat anything in the meantime, and I just have no moderation when it comes to Pringles. Once I've eaten one, I'll finish the whole tube, especially if they're sour cream and onion flavour like these. So now I feel unwell from overeating, and it's not even Christmas Eve yet!

It's really all about buying things

It's really no fun at all having to work late on December 22nd. I've done it before and not liked it, and I didn't have to work in a shop packed with Christmas shoppers. So I deeply sympathise with all those poor people who have to man the tills for late-night shopping at this time of year. At least, those are the thoughts that passed through my head when I went out late-night shopping tonight. I didn't stay at home to ease their annoyance factor slightly, or anything like that.

Wouldn't it be great if everyone did, though? Not only would you make the lives of a lot of low-paid customer-service-facilitators a whole lot more bearable, but it'd cause a major economic panic and stories in the papers about how Christmas sales are down, even if they aren't, possibly the collapse of capitalist society and the rise of a glorious socialist revolution of the kind I keep going on about! Wouldn't that be something?

The dog of death

I checked the Radio Times synopsis of The Grim Reaper Dog - apparently it has correctly predicted the deaths of 58 residents of a nursing home in Ohio over the last three years, by barking to the staff and then staying with the patient until they pass away. Personally, I think I'd rather end my days in a nursing home that doesn't have a dog that tells me when I'm going to die. It's probably carrying some contagious disease, that'll be how it does it. I'm sorry, this mutt doesn't hold a candle to the Memory Chimp.

It's times like this that I feel I really should find something more worthwhile to blog about...

Ich hasse Toastbrot

Set your videos, or your DVD recorders or Sky+ boxes or whatever the cool people have these days, for 7:30pm on January 29th, for "The Memory Chimp". Actually, that'd be a cool name for a documentary about me, but in fact this is the one about Ayumu the chimp, with a brief cameo by me. It's the seventh in the Extraordinary Animals documentary series - set your videos for the others if you like, but they didn't see fit to ask me what I think about the non-human stars of those ones. The lineup is:

Jan 2 - The Elephant Artist
Jan 3 - The Grim Reaper Dog
Jan 4 - The Smartest Sea Lion
Jan 8 - The Genius Parrot
Jan 15 - The Greatest Ape
Jan 22 - The Super 'Sonic' Dolphin
Jan 29 - The Memory Chimp

The titles all seem more or less self-explanatory, except for The Grim Reaper Dog. What the heck could this extraordinary dog do to merit such a title? All I can think of is that it's a documentary about Joscha Sauer's "Nichtlustig" comics, with particular emphasis on Death's toast-hating pet poodle, but that seems a little unlikely. I hope it is, though.