I've been trying to think of a feat of mental tenacity for the Hercules show and wondering both what would be the ultimate challenge for my brain that I could complete in four months.
I started by considering what feats of intelligence I have admired over the years and within seconds it had come to me - the Macwhirter brothers on Record Breakers.
As a child, I could never get over the fact that you could ask these arrogant twins anything about any record in the world and they would be able to provide the answer, from memory. This was pretty tough when there were two of them, but after Ross's untimely death, Norris continued the tradition alone.
I remember him once being challenged by a cocky child who asked him "Which tree has the most leaves?" (yes, there was an echo of this in a subsequent sketch on Fist of Fun, comedy nerds). Norris gave his answer, (I can't remember, let's say it's the Bixby tree) but the snotty child immediately remonstrated with him. "No, that's incorrect," he said, "It's (again, no idea what it really was, so let's say) the Ferringo tree."
Norris was flabberghasted by the insolence of this swotty misfit. He had met a match for his own self-importance and he didn't like it (I may be wrong, but I am beginning to wonder if that child may have been the young Simon Streeting). "I can assure you I am right," claimed the right-wing record-based memory man.
"Well, I can assure you that I am correct," the petulant youth may have continued (c'mon my memory is not THAT good), "I know, because I looked it up beforehand."
Even then I remember gasping with surprise at the sheer gall of this boy. The point of "Challenge Norris" (or whatever the segment was called) was for youngsters to find out something that they didn't know, from that font of useless knowledge that was the living McWhirter man. Although there was an element of "I wonder if he'll know this", to my knowledge no-one had been so dishonourable as to deliberately set out to fox him, by asking something that they already knew the answer to, and then to challenge him if he got it wrong. One wondered how many times Norris had just said the first thing that popped into his head and assumed that no-one would challenge his majesty.
He didn't like to be told he was wrong. Nor, if the rumours I've heard about him from people who worked on the show, did he particularly care for people from other nations. But that's by the by.
As far as I recall, the next week, Roy Castle revealed that they'd had time to check their facts and the boy in question was mistaken. Or at least there was some ambiguity about what constituted a leaf and, Norris had also made a small mistake in his answer. So the vain young pup had after all trumped the master. Norris took it all with an ungracious sneer.
Just as Janet Ellis dressed as Nell Gwynne awakened my sexual desire, Norris McWhirter's lack of knowledge about which tree has the most leaves showed me that authority was not always right, that it could be challenged. It was an important moment in my life (though not as important as the Nell Gwynne bit, which I have a much more accurate and clear memory of and which I relive in my mind on an almost nightly basis). I have never masterbated over the idea of Norris McWhirter not knowing which tree has the most leaves, and anyone who says I have is lying.
So I was wondering if it is possible for me to memorise every fact in the Guinness Book of Records in four months and make part of my show into a quiz where a member of the audience asks me three questions from the book (which will be instantly verifiable as they will have the book with them).
I do have quite a good memory, but I'm not sure that that is really a possibility. Especially given that I also have to write (and learn) a show and perform another 11 tasks in all that time. I'd need to get names, dates and statistics in my head for every single record, I'd be bound to fail.
But evenso I might give it a go.
If this show doesn't send me over the edge into outright insanity, then nothing will.
