the good, the bad & the ugly

and in reverse order...

The ugly

Mother of pearl, that interviewer was awful. (we're talking the douglas coupland reading and interview in nottingham this evening) Rules of interviewing must surely include not trying to wangle your own achievements into a conversation with someone who outclasses you. also, pulling your interviewee up on little details so you look cleverer is also not a great trick. best not to look confused when given an answer you don't think suited your question and then following it up with 'yes but the question i asked was...' He made too much of himself (as you mentioned i am an author too i didn't notice it being mentioned apart from by himself), he tried to make in jokes (don't you think it would be a good idea to explain what jpod is) and he also called the audience stupid at one point. i think it was about his references to pi but i'm not entirely sure. also he name dropped some other Canadian author and told Doug to 'tell the audience about them cos i'm sure they won't know anything about him'. He was a disaster of an interviewer and hopelessly smug after he'd asked every question that he obviously thought was an absolute corker. "I have to ask Doug, what do you think of the latest Morrisey album" the reason we discover he 'had' to ask that question was to get in that he had burnt a copy of it for Doug. >gag<

By the way the latest Morrisey album is great.

the bad

i lost my phone at some point today. so if you're reading this and you're a usual texter then i'm sorry i have no idea where it is and i'm really cross with myself. someone has found it for sure because as soon as i got in i gave it a call and it had been switched off. thankfully i'd just erased all my text messages the day before. but all my photos on there..... man, there are some i can never get back... the explosion at Buncefield, Bryan Robson signing at work, parties, people i worked with years ago. Not to mention all those numbers i have to find again. grr.

the good

well, here was going to go a picture of me and Doug but I've tried twice and blogger doesn't wanna know so i'll try again later.
Anyway, he was surprisingly nervy. Apparantly the last time he came he sat in the green room then ran away he was too nervous! At least this time he came out. He obviously does this a lot and told us he loved doing it but he didn't seem a natural public speaker. He was funny and likeable though and manoeuvred his way through a minefield of questions already detailed above. He read quite a lot from JPod which was enjoyable even though I had just finished it on the train up. He ambled through his talk, getting distracted along the way and picking up where he left off which was fun. I'm sure I'll add more soon but I'm getting fed up with the pictures not working now so here I post...