If anyone was up early enough to catch his show this Saturday morning on Five Live, you'd have heard me... first caller on the show, telling him my tale of when I was locked in the Empire State Building....
many years ago I phoned into his Sunday show I think it was probably back on Radio London. He was doing this thing on "Dave" being the most popular blokes name and wanted people to ring in with how many Dave or Davids they personally knew. I worked out it was at least 20+ and phoned in. We had just started the conversation about it when the phone line went dead. I turned the radio back on in the car and the station was not broadcasting. Must have been some massive power failure in the area around the studio. My one chance of radio fame ruined!
Missed it Willy, which is unusual for me as I am normally a devoted listener. I nearly called the week before, as he was asking for 'themed' family names. 30 years ago when I was working in Hong Kong (child labour, obviously), I had a senior colleague called Adolf Hsu. His brothers, we discovered, were called Benito and Francisco. Surmised that their Dad was a bit of a fascist. Adolf most certainly wasn't though. At that time in Hong Kong (and probably still now) the local Chinese would usually take a Western first name in addition to their Chinese given names. Some were pretty random, but my favurite by far was being served in some fast food bar by a bloke with a name tag which said Cyclops Wong.
Podcast is available, of course... Basic story is that on my first business trip that stretched over a weekend, a friend and I went into the citty to do the touristy things. Started with the ESB, which (for those not familiar) goes like this: there's airport style security, followed by a long queue to the lifts. The first lift is an express that goes up to the 80th floor in around a minute. Then you walk round to the regular lift that takes you to the 86th floor, where the observation deck is. Well we and an extended Italian family (either The Sporanos or the Dolmio family, take your pick but there were about 15 of them) pile into the lift, and the operator outside presses the button. When the doors open, we all get out, the lift goes, and we realise we are on the 85th floor.... Loads of locked doors, No Entry signs, grimy, barred windows, and not a great view. Every minute or so, the lift doors opened on a car full of people, and we tried to get across to them that we were stuck before the doors closed on them. Eventually we wrote a quick note and passed it to someone to hand in at the top. Finally, after around 30 minutes, an empty car arrived and we all escaped. Danny reckoned that there was no 85th floor, and we decided at the end that it was a strange portal, kind of like floor 7 1/2 in Being John Malkovich...
Willy, I've just listened to your call to the Danny Baker show, excellent! It's 8.30pm in Arequipa listening to a fellow R talking about getting stuck in the empire state building, brilliant! You sounded very eloquent!
Cheers Peru. After the show, I was actually recognised in the street by someone who had heard me on the show that morning (true, it WAS a mate of mine, but still....! )
