4337/17256 I had been invited by the hosts of the excellent and yet totally unfair quiz show Pointless to interview them at the Apple Store this evening to promote their new book. No fee had been mentioned, but I didn’t care. I was doing this for all the hours of pleasure they had given me and for the lifetime of pain that they have foisted on me by having me fail so spectacularly on their programme. But I am over that now.
I will never be over that.And maybe Ian Apple would be so pleased with my work that he would give me a new iPad and iPhone and Macbook Air. Why wouldn’t he? He has millions of the things and they cost him 1p each to make. Failing that maybe I’d get a free Pointless book. Or maybe a 15% discount on the Pointless book. Or maybe Richard Osman would hold me in his arms and rock me to sleep. Money and iPhones and homoerotic experiences aren’t everything though. I was happy to be out the house and talking to people. Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman are two of the most charming and lovely men in the country, if not the world and it’s always a pleasure to see them. Backstage Xander was talking about his role on the forthcoming Dangermouse relaunch. The man running the event hadn’t heard this news and said, “Are you in Dangermouse?” “I am Dangermouse,” said Armstrong, with the kind of conviction that made me think that he isn’t just doing the voice, but has taken on the role full time and if the call came in he’d have to leave the interview to save the world. The interview was lots of fun and should be available on iTunes by next week. It’s an Apple store podcast and not a RHLSTP (though at least one of the gents should be on the show this series - still finalising the details) so I think it will only be available via that particular platform (sorry Apple haters). I did suggest that the podcast should be sent directly to all 650 million iTunes users in the world, like they’d done with the U2 album. But I think we all know that that was a mistake in that it didn’t go far enough. I proposed that Apple customers should all get the video podcast and be unable to access anything else on iTunes until they had watched it all the way through. Ian Apple’s minions seemed less keen. We chatted about the show and its origins and the most stupid answers they’ve had and why it wasn’t fair that I hadn’t won - though they did tell a story of super fan Lee Mack’s appearance. He’d come on with Bobby Ball who had gone first and when asked to name a word ending in “son” had said “appleson”. All the other teams got a combined score of under 100 and so Lee Mack was going home before he’d even given his answer. I did also let Richard Osman know that he is tall (he hadn’t realised so I am glad I informed him) and talked about Alexander being directly related to William the Conqueror. But if you want to find out what Xander thinks William the Conqueror would think of one of his descendants hosting Pointless then you’ll have to tune into the podcast. Ian Apple did not give me any free products - not even some out of date ones that he can’t sell any more due to the constant evolution of his computers - but I did come away with a signed Pointless book which I will give away in one of the forthcoming monthly subscriber draws. I thought we might all head out after the chat and play an impromptu game of Pointless somewhere, but the TV superstars were whisked away in their fancy cars and I walked through the rain to get the tube. How do you like them applesons? RHLSTP with Katherine Ryan is now up on iTunes . You can also get it here or on video.
