Damn... I'd been planning this as a nice light-hearted writeup, but the massive destruction
terrorists have just caused in
New York,
Washington and
Pittsburg makes it seem self-indulgent and horribly trivial. Still –
we cannot allow terrorism to triumph. Right? And damnit, I'm going to be on
television for the first and maybe the only time in my life!
I'm kind of ashamed of my own frivolity but hell, I've written it now so here goes...
I'm going to be on Channel 4 tea time quiz show Countdown. I filmed my appearance yesterday at Yorkshire Television in Leeds; it'll be broadcast at 4:15 on the 27th of September. Originally I was due to film some time around Easter, on the same day as my two brothers, but I was ill at the time.
Richard Whiteley really seems to be about as much of a buffoon in real life as he is on television. At one point he called me Fraser (my real name is Fergus). I waited a bit for him to notice what he'd done, but he just sat blankly waiting for me to pick my letters until someone pointed out that my name isn't Fraser. It took about a minute or so for the audience to stop laughing at him and settle down enough for filming to re-start.
Then he did it again.
Sadly I didn't manage to beat my brother Bruno's eight-letter spectacular, 'orgasmed,' which was almost certainly the naughtiest word ever to appear on a tea time quiz show, but I did manage to uphold the family tradition of rudeness by getting the letters FART as the first four letters in one of the letters games - this is probably enough to get me into compilations of comedy clips for years to come.