Two minutes of fame for Wally

Back in my ‘Five Things‘ posting I mentioned that my nickname used to be Wally.

I used to be known by the nickname Wally.  This died away after the term started to be used to describe a bit of a fool.  The urban legend is that this first happened at Weeley Pop Festival in 1971 – which I was at, I remember the circumstances, but wasn’t the Wally in question.

The BBC TV programme Balderdash and Piffle in association with the OED recently put out an appeal for help in tracking the origin of words as they have entered the English language.  One of these words was Wally. So with my background I logged in to their site and gave a brief overview of what I remembered, then though nothing more of it.

That was until a couple of weeks ago when I got an email from a researcher on the programme to organise a time to have a phone conversation to talk about my memories.  To cut a long story short, yesterday I ended up on a train to London to record for an interview for the programme.

I met with the production team and the presenter, Victoria Coren, in the sunshine on the steps of the National Theatre on London’s South Bank.

Almost before I realized it I had related my tale to Victoria on camera and it was all over.  So not 15 minutes of fame – it will probably edit down to no more than two.

Apparently the series is to be aired in a couple of months.  They are going to let me know when.

A different and interesting, beautiful spring, day in London.  You never know what will happen when you login and enter your details to a site!