I get asked to do interviews on radio all the time, especially the smaller local stations and so when I get the invitation to go to the BBC in London to appear on a national station, it is always a treat to do so.
Whenever I visit a radio station to do an interview I never really know what to expect from the interviewer. Occasionally someone has a bee in their bonnet and a point to make and that day I am going to be their victim.
However more often than not the person asking the questions is genuinely interested in what I have to say not only for themselves but also for their listeners.
This is usually the case with the BBC and today I had the privilege of being interviewed by Nihal of Radio 1 and the Culture Show fame.
You know you are going to have an insightful and engaging interview with great questions and good conversation when the DJ makes a point of coming out of the studio to meet you, say Hi and get to know a little which is exactly what Nihal did.
I was on for an hour and in between some great music we discussed all sorts of topics.
The key focus was of course memory improvement and we spent a bit of time talking about the World Memory Championships. I always enjoy seeing the look of complete astonishment on peoples faces when they discover exactly what I had to do to come second in the World Memory Championships.
One of the biggest questions that came out of the conversation was that of remembering names and faces.
Baya Cat the studio producer (yes that is her real name) wanted to know how to overcome her challenge of not being able to remember the names of the people she has only just met (which is an extremely common challenge). We discussed this in some detail using the scenario of a large Asian wedding.
We discussed a variety of other topics too including general memory improvement, the effect of concentration on memory, Mind Mapping, reading effectively and dealing with information overwhelm.
Overall it was a good interview and I really wish we could have recorded our conversations whilst the records were playing because we covered some great stuff there too.
Thanks Nihal and I hope we do it again some time.
If you want to listen to the replay of the interview then you can find it here at http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/nihal/biog.shtml under “previous shows” and click on the Thursday link. This will only be valid for the next 7 days (it will be gone by the 15th May).
I am hoping to get a recording of the interview to put up here on my blog but in the meantime you can get it from the BBC.