A conversation with my Dad, Rick Thompson. Transcript available below.
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Rick is a journalist who worked for the BBC for about 30 years. He now runs his own media training company, called T-Media. He’s also been my Dad for 35 years. In my family we consider him to be like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. His knowledge is pretty encyclopedic. If I have a question, he is usually able to give quite an extended answer to it, although sometimes the facts can be a little bit unreliable. That’s why I’ve started to call him “Rickipedia”.
In this episode I ask my Dad various questions which were sent in by fans of Luke’s English Podcast on Facebook. To visit and like the facebook page, click here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lukes-English-Podcast/227129545507?ref=ts&fref=ts
What do you think of my Dad’s answers? Leave your comments below.
My Dad and I both hope you enjoy this episode, and find it interesting and useful as a way of practising your English listening.
Transcript starts here…
You’re listening to Luke’s English podcast. For more information visit teacherluke.wordpress.com.
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Luke’s English podcast. In this one my parents are here in Paris visiting for the weekend and so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to sit down with my Dad for about an hour and interview him and just answer various questions which you, the listeners, have sent in to Luke’s English Podcast via the facebook page.
Now, I’ll go into to that in a moment but Dad, are you having a nice weekend here? Bonjour Luke, bonjour yes, I’m having a very good time, thank you very much. We’ve been along the left bank on the river Seine, we’ve been to Notre Dame and the weather is nice and it is really great to be here in Paris. Hm, can I just ask you actually Dad, whereabouts you come from? Where do you come from in the UK exactly? Well, I was born in the city of Leeds which is in the North of England. It’s in the big country of Yorkshire and… but I was brought up in my teenage years in South London. Em, so I’m originally from Yorkshire but I was brought up in London. Ok, do you have an accent? No, I don’t really. I mean, I… when I was little I did have a Yorkshire accent. It’s quite a strong accent. What does it sound like? It’s got flat vowels. It’s, you know, ‘ okay – oop north ‘ the vowels are all flat. That’s right, I’ve heart that. So if in… em, I can’t do a Yorkshire accent. It’s very difficult to do a Yorkshire accent, even though I’m trying to. I mean it turns out to be more like Liverpool which is completely different but I did have an accent whatever it is like. When I was at school and of course I was teased when I moved to South London because it is a strong accent and that’s why I got rid of it. It’s interesting that thing about Yorkshire accent, having flat vowel sounds. If you know anything about phonetics you’ll know that there’re sort of two types of vowel sounds. You got single vowel sounds or monothongs and then double vowel sounds , dipthongs. So dip thongs are things like “au” – “ear” things like that. Yeah the vowel changes it’s quality as you say it.
Ear or au, things like that. I heard a theory that in some parts of the North of England, there aren’t so many dip thongs. That’s what you mean by flat vowel sounds. That is exactly what I mean yes. So in Yorkshire it’s particularly pronounced that you don’t move your mouth as you say a vowel. It stays the same. For example, em, you know we say bath in the north as suppose to bath and we say path as suppose to path. But also, if you say… in the South England you would say “right” as suppose to right okay. Right is changing as you say it -right- . Dip thong “i” , right. But in Yorkshire, they’ll all don’t say right and it won’t change. So it’s not “ai” but “ah”right. Interesting isn’t that, very interesting but bath and bath thing, it’s not so a dip thong, more just short vowel sound and a long vowel sound. Bath- bath, I’ve talked about that before. It’s a distinction between north and south of England. That… err, those two sounds.
Anyway, em, on Luke’s English podcast, the facebook page, yesterday I wrote this status update, inviting my listeners to ask questions which I would then pose to my Dad Rick and the status update goes like this.
Hello listeners, I’m with my Dad this weekend and tomorrow, I’m going to ask him for, I’m going to interview him for the podcast. Would you like to ask him some questions? Please add your questions for my Dad here. His knowledge is encyclopedic but slightly unreliable. So, he is like Wikipedia, but I call him Rickipedia because his name is Rick. So please send us your questions for Rickipedia and as we stand now, on Sunday there are thirty questions here and we’re not going to be able to deal with all of them. In fact after about the first fifteen questions I did write a comment saying “That’s it! We’ve had enough questions. Please, stop, but the questions kept rolling in. In fact they’re still coming now, as we do this. So, we’re not going to be able to deal with every single question, I’m afraid but let’s try and get through as many as we can in about an hour. Okay, I’m trying to answer as concisely as I can and yes Rickipedia is entirely unreliable.
Really? Okay, so other viewpoints are available, Ladies and Gentlemen. That’s right.
First question is from a listener called Hai Tuan I think that’s how to pronounce your name. Can I just say actually at the beginning of this episode that, it’s very difficult for me to pronounce everybody’s name correctly. So, I’ll probably end up pronouncing your names all completely wrong and I hope you find that funny rather than just outright offensive okay? So just bear in mind, I don’t necessarily know how to pronounce your names but I’m going to try, I’m going to do my best.
So the first one, Hai Tuan and Hai Tuan begins the message by calling you Sir. Oh, that’s very nice to you Hai Tuan I’m not… haven’t been knighted Sir, Sir Rick and the Queen has not inviting me to Buckingham Palace to lay the ceremonial sword on my shoulders but I don’t mind being called Sir. It’s very respectful. Thank you very much. Do we, actually, do we call people Sir in England? Not so much now. No, no we don’t. I mean some shopkeepers or people in restaurants might say Sir but it’s pretty old fashioned now and I think that it’s falling out of use. People don’t really say it anymore. Except as you said in shops or restaurants, like sales staff and sales assistants. Even then it’s not as common as it was because it’s when someone comes up to you in a shop and says “can I help you Sir?” It has that kind of oily thing about it and you know I think that people tend to avoid it now. So, it’s not very common to say Sir anymore unlike in France where people call you Monsieur all the time (Indeed !) which is just very polite and all that kind of thing.
Right so Hai Tuan says “Sir, what’s the difference between the UK today and the UK thirty years ago? A massive question which you now have to try to deal with in just a few minutes. So what’s the difference between the UK now and the UK thirty years ago? That question received five likes. So not only does Hai Tuan want to know this but five other people are interested in your response to that. Well, I can just think of a few things, just to be brief. The first thing of course is that the UK today is thirty years older than it was thirty years ago but in the early eighties, there was a different atmosphere, there was a lot of tension arising from the cold war and there was a confrontation with the eastern bloc and of course the so-called Iron Curtain was still there and there was a lot of anxiety about nuclear missiles being moved into the UK from America, nuclear missiles being moved west of the Urals by the Russians and all that tension was really quite an anxious period. Cold war! Cold war, now, it’s a , it’s a much more relaxed international scene across the whole of Europe, I’m glad to say, and the tensions are all about economics we’ve had a terrible financial collapse. So now everybody is suffering in one way or another from the fact that the banks you know had this terrible explosion and didn’t lend enough money. So, there’s two things, one is that international tension has been replaced by a sort of economic difficulty, the other thing of course is if you look back forty years what an amazing change everywhere. The computer, the personal computer was only just appearing and, even in the workplace, it was quite a new thing in the early eighties to have a computer on your desk and we now take it entirely for granted that you know we have computer chips are in absolutely everything but it’s only thirty years you know since it really started to happen. I can remember the first time I had… I saw a digital watch . Really? I can remember the first time I put a calculator in my hand because I had to have one at work at the BBC to work out the timing of the programs. Tell me about the digital watch. That probably was in the eighties or the early… Seventies I would think, I would guess, but, well I remember when they suddenly appeared, digital watches, wow ! What did you think of your first? Well you didn’t buy one I think. I’m not, I had never liked them but I’m very unusual. Lots, lots of people had digital watches. What did you think of digital watches when they first arrived? I thought they were ugly and I didn’t like them (Yeah) but the reason for that is that I think that the watch with hands on a dial is a brilliant, brilliant design concept. If you think about it, how you glance at it and you know what’s the time is. It’s absolutely incredible bit of brilliance.. Whoever first thought of the clock face. You say that… When the digital watch seemed to be a giant leap backwoods, where it give you figures to tell you what the time is and I just felt that this was a little bit boring. But wait a minute, you say that it’s very easy to read a digital… read an old fashioned watch with hands but I remember having to learn how to read one of these watches and for example my students, well not my students at school but children have to… they take quite a long time to learn that the little hand means the hour and the big hand is the minutes and that’s actually a bit complex. Well, I suppose so. I had never thought of that but anyway I’ve told you that the kids had little computers that changed everything of course. That’s just happening thirty years ago and the only other thing about Britain itself is of course that the population’s increased quite a lot in the last thirty years mainly through immigration and it feels, it’s a more crowded place in the big cities but also it’s an incredible multicultural country now. I mean London isn’t the only city where there’s so many languages being spoken on the trains or on the tube in London or in the street and, the latest census where we, we have a census every ten years and the census of 2011 shows this, shows that in some of the big cities only half the people who live there were actually born in Britain. Really? …and, I think it’s a particular characteristic of Britain now that it is phenomenally multicultural. One of the newspaper headlines said: we are the world, and I actually think that’s rather neat and certainly the… there aren’t very serious ethnic tensions, there’re very, you know, localized minor little problems, nothing serious at all. People get on with each other really well. I think it everyone’s accepted that the UK is a fantastically multicultural country. The rare occurrences of racial tension are often done by sort of individuals and for example you see this viral videos of someone on the bus who is kind of lost their temper and started shouting in a racist way but they are always considered to be complete idiots, I mean… Yes, they are ! They are in a very small minority. We have groups like the EDF the English Defence… EDL the English Defence League. EDF is an electricity company in France. EDL English Defence League and they’re a sort of English nationalist group, but they’re sort of like stupid idiots really. They are of a type, they are all ill educated and they are very small in number and fortunately they don’t have any significance. I hope that the EDL don’t now come looking for me because I know that they have baseball bats and cricket bats and things., but I …yeah, that’s their method of persuasion. But I know, I know, you know special Kung Fu techniques, so if they do, I’ll just hadoken, I just do a Hadoken and it won’t be a problem. So the UK changed quite a lot. It’s lot more populated and we’ve got you know computers and the internet of course now so yeah, things are changing really rapidly.
André has the next question, André has written the next question and it says ” What does it feel like to be British these days?” that’s sort of related to the previous one. How does it feel to be British? Well, gosh! I can’t speak for the other 62 million people who live in Britain André. I mean I can just tell you my personal view. I’ve always quite liked living in Britain and I have traveled around the world quite a lot and I’ve always been very happy to come home. I like all sorts about Britain and I think, I mean most people feel quite comfortable about being British. There is a movement at the moment which is a bit hostile to the European Union because people think that the EU has in some ways got too big and too powerful and Britain is probably the most Europe-skeptic country of the 27 soon to be 28 members of the EU and it’s a general feeling but I don’t think it’s anything other than a kind of intellectual debate. I mean I think that people wonder whether it’s, the EU should be reformed so that there’s less bureaucratic and maybe a little bit less wasteful and that is a perfectly intelligent debate and I don’t think that there’s any anxiety about people feeling un-British because they’re in the EU basically is just a kind of technical debate about what’s best for the country.
Yah okay, ham, so next question is from Bruno ….. and this is a question about football. So if you’re into football, listen closely, if you, if you’re not into Football, don’t worry about it because we’re only going talk about it for a couple of minutes and who knows you might learn something about football and then you can kind of impress people by saying ” Oh well I know that Lionel Messi and didn’t score a goal in the latest game which is a huge surprise. You know you can sort of wax lyrical about football but the question is Dad, which team is going to win the UEFA for champions league this season? Well, I think (?) I think we’re down to the semi final stay. There’re only four teams left. Wait a minute. What are those four teams?… I can’t remember. Barcelona, em, Real Madrid, I think. Certainly Bayern Munich, someone else, I don’t know. I’m sorry, isn’t it terrible? There’re not British teams left in it. All I can say is that a few years ago I was at a conference in Barcelona and I was fortunate enough to meet a guy who worked for, he was a senior man in Icelandic television and we fell into conversation and he said that his TV station had the rights to the Champion League and therefore he had VIP tickets for the game that was coming up the next evening , would I like to join him? Very nice. At the Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona and I said yes, please ! So I went to this stadium and it was Barcelona versus Bayern Munich in this incredible stadium. 80 thousand people, huge noise and, I felt rather sorry for Bayern Munich having to play in this atmosphere but they were brilliant, they were very very cool. They won 3:1, nobody had scored three goals in this stadium for a long long long time and I was always… I was impressed with Munich and I’ve always kept an eye on them since then and they seem to be a very cool team. They’re not kind of starstruck, they don’t have any extravagantly ridiculous players and they just, they play very very well and I think that if I had to bet on who would win the Champions League I’d go for Bayern Munich. Okay, cool, calm collected, well organized German efficiency is going to win. Well, they’ve also got a lot of flair but they do, or they don’t seem to be affected by the atmosphere. Okay, right, let’s see what happens. We’ll see if Rick Thompson’s prediction of a German victory this year will come true.
I wonder if, maybe we you can win some money? You should put some money on it Dad. I don’t feel like confident. Are you a gambling man? I’m not, no. No. No I think gambling is for losers really. Okay except when you win and then it is … Right Shall I move on to the next question?
Alright. Stefano … who I expect is from Italy but I’m not sure. He says ” I’d like to know what he thinks about Eastern Europe, especially the South Eastern part, for example Serbia and bordering states because I know he worked there sometimes. He works there sometimes. You do work in Serbia occasionally, don’t you Dad? Yes, I do. I mean, I worked for BBC News for a long time and now I do training and development work in broadcasting, in broadcast journalism and in parts of Europe, that you know, people feel they need some advice and some help. And I’ve done a long project in Serbia. I’ve been going there occasionally with some colleagues to do some training and other work in Radio and Television over the past six years and I’ve also done some work in other parts of Southeast Europe. I’ve been in Croatia, in Kosovo, in em, where else? Slovenia and so I, I do like that part of the world very much, I think from of the perspective of people living in the UK, they don’t know much about it. I mean I think they’re pretty ignorant about it and there’re also, I think it’s a bad stereotyping for the the Balkans. People say “oh you’re going to Serbia , well is it safe? Well, you know, of course it is, it is a gorgeous country and it is beautiful and there are some really really nice people and all I can say is that I think that if they, if that part of the world continues to make the right kind of progress, it’s all based on rule of law, where they’ve suffered terribly from corruption, corrupt business people, kind of… you know mafia kind of stuff and corrupt politicians and I think that it’s improving and if, if they can establish rule of laws that there’s a fair society of people, that’s the first point and it’s got great potential. Croatia is going to join the EU on the first of July, becomes the 28th member state and it’s, of course a lot of people know that Croatia is beautiful and it’s got a great coastline down the Adriatic. (Yeah) I think it’ has also a lot of potential. So I think the whole region, has got potential to grow and it just needs to face up with some determination the fact that the society has to be fair based of rule of law. So it’s a slightly misunderstood region but it has a lot to offer and as long as they can put their slightly difficult past behind them and bring a lot of things to Europe. It’s gonna… they could, you know, bring so many things. They have so much to offer. Yes, I agree. It’s a good holiday destination, isn’t it that part of the world? It certainly is and not terribly expensive and Croatia is known because of its coastline for its holiday potential but there’re other spots that are gorgeous in Northern Serbia. Novi Sad is a beautiful place and they have this big Exit Pop Festival every year in July. The Exit Pop Festival is sensational. Exit, well the Exit Pop Festival. It’s call Exit Pop Festival, The Exit Pop Festival yeah and it attracts thousand and thousand of people. Any big bands playing there? Yeah they sound, I don’t know who’s playing this year. You can look it up on line. Hem, but Novi Sad in Northern Serbia is a beautiful place to go to, you can go to Mostra and Bosnia. I mean there’s all sorts of really interesting places to visit in that part of the world.
And now, thanks to Rick Thompson, if you watch you know the News on TV it’s probably a little bit better than it was before. Mainly thanks to Rick Thompson. So that’s the… that’s what the Thompson family does and we save the world through broadcasting. Well they certainly have improved the quality of the broadcast news in the last few years. It’s not entirely due to me but it’s certainly improving. By the way my Dad works in a sort of journalist, training for journalists in Television and Radio broadcasting and he is being working in Serbia and some other places, helping them out there. Good job, well done Dad! He was sort of doing a very good thing.
So next question is from Hiroshi …..who is from Japan. Do you speak any Japanese Dad? Hem, I remember Arigatou Gozaimasu. Is that right? Thank you very much. “Arigatou Gozaimasu” Gosh I can’t think so much. Don’t laugh out there!
” A r i g a t o u G o z a i m a s u ” which is like the full version but then you got the shorter more informal version. For example if you’ve…if you’re slightly drunk on a Friday night and you have been eating Ramen in a Ramen noodle shop in Japan in Tokyo then you don’t have to do the “Arigatou Gozaimasu”. You don’t have to do the whole thing. You just do the quick version which is, “azamass!” and even just …. “ssss”.
This is just the super short version. So if next time you eat Ramen in a Tokyo noodle bar Dad, that’s how you should say “Thank you”. I’ll practice.
By the way (?) means Thank you, thanks, ta, cheers. So it’s saying that in Japanese.
Anyway this is not Luke’s Japanese podcast. It’s not like (….?) It’s not like that. It’s just Luke’s English podcast.
So the question that Hiroshi has is “Why did you, Rick, get the good idea to present a drum kit to your sons for Christmas in, many years ago? Well, he’s very well informed, isn’t he? He’s been listening to Luke’s English podcast and he knows that for example, I think it was back in 1990 or 1991, you and Mum decided that for Christmas you would buy us a drum kit. Now, for listeners… if you don’t know what a drum kit is. It’s a musical instrument you know “dou-doum, dou-doumdoumm doum da…….shhhhh “That’s a drum kit, that’s the sound of a drum kit anyway, and my parents bought my brother and me a drum kit, for Christmas and that led to us becoming massive billion pound earning rock stars. Well they do both play drums very well, that’s for sure. We didn’t become rock stars but we did learn how to play the drums and we have always enjoyed playing music ever since. So, why did you buy us a drum kit? Well when I was a little boy, my parents were quite musical and we used to play music together sitting around the piano and I used to hit tin cans and things with knitting needles -Luke: really?- as a little drummer when I was small and then when I was at school I started playing drums. I’d played drums in bands in South of London ham you know before I went to university and everybody did in those days. Wait a minute. What kind of bands did you play in? Well, little pop music bands, pop-rock-bands. This is like the mid sixties. We’re talking yeah, we’re talking 63 / 64 around that time. Everybody was in a band in those days and you played things like you know pop music. You played some American Chuck Berry things, make people dance but you also played The Hollies and you played early record by The Who , you know… Bit of Beatles in there then? …and maybe a bit of Beatles even yes. Yes? Lovely. So everybody you know tried to pick up a guitar and playing those days. I did play a bit of guitar but I also played drums.
Anyway, so we went on this holiday for remember Luke to California. I do remember that. Big holiday, go to California. It was great. Fantastic and there was a friend of mine who lived there and we stayed with him for a night or two and he had a drum kit in his garage, (, he certainly did) and you two started showing that you had natural talent for this. You spent a bit of time in this garage with this drum kit. Yeah. So we thought, hello, we ought to get them one and fortunately we were living in a house which had a little, little outbuilding in the garden. A sort of garage which was separated, a garage which was not connected to the house. It was once upon a time a garage but we used it as their kind of play area where they could hang out. Kind of garden house, kind of thing. Yes, so it was and there weren’t any other houses close to it. So it was okay if you wanted to play drums and play a bit of music in there it wasn’t really disturb anybody. So we had a space in the garden where there was a little house that was big enough to fit a drum kit in it and so Mum and Dad decided, well they could, we could put a drum kit in the garden house, that’s right, and it didn’t disturb our neighbors too much and, so that’s what we did but that wasn’t a new one because these things can be extremely expensive. So we got a second hand drum kit which was actually quite a nice one and, and yeah, that’s what happened. Okay, right well thanks. Well, I was so glad you both play drums so well and listeners “they do”! I was extremely, I was just over the moon to get that drum kit and I then played it for about one hour every day, which is just a privilege.
Right next one is from… now he’s, wait a minute. Hiroshi has actually got a few questions but he’s a… Is he not cheating, Hiroshi? Well he is just cheating. It’s mentioning just one question but it’s Hiroshi, so you know, we’ll let him off. Okay quick.
Em , the next question is “Have you …, Do you or have you ever had Tetrisitis? Hem, Tetrisitis of course is, what happens when you play Tetris for a long time and when you stop playing, you close your eyes, you can still see the Tetris blocks falling in front of your vision. So, have you ever had Tetrisitis? Well, I certainly did when, when, when there was a game boy in the house. I certainly didn’t play a bit of Tetris and it is a bit addictive, isn’t it? Hum, yeah, but I mean after a while, I don’t think I exactly… I, I had to go to Tetris anonymous of course and you have to sit around in a circle and stand up and say my name is Rick Thompson and I’m a Tetris addict. I’m a Tetriholic ! Em, no, it’s not true all of that. The fact is that, em, every now and then so, you would wake up at four o’clock in the morning with the Tetris music going round and round in your head. How is it go? ( Wonderful moment where Luke and his Dad croon the memorable Tetris music together ! ) And then the other one, the other one. And this can be really terrible, really really terrible feeling. (?) you don’t really want to get Tetrisitis everybody… if you’re finally getting it, go and get professional treatment. Go to the, go to the doctor, not Doctor Mario, he is not a real doctor Ladies and Gentlemen. Right, so yeah, you have suffered from Tetrisitis, as most of us have, you know if we play Tetris.
So, and… alright. Finally question from Hiroshi and that’s about bird watching. Now, some people in some countries think that it’s a bit ridiculous that us British people enjoy looking at birds in the wildlife , you know in the countyside. We like to go into the countryside with some binoculars and sort of you know find some wild birds and have a look, yah, look, what’s that’s? That’s an eagle. Oh my god it’s big, ah, scary or what’s that one? Oh, it’s beautiful. That’s an avocet you know and you tick it off your list of birds right? You like bird-watching, why? Well, I think it’s, it’s fairly obvious, I’m not the only one. Obviously British people are known to like wildlife very much. The royal society for the protection of birds has more than one million members but there are different kind of bird-watchers. Some of them do get a bit obsessive and they have to go and see rare birds to tick them off on their list, so that they have seen more than anybody else. Well, they’re a kind of minority that called “twitchers”. I’m not quite sure why they are called twitchers but they just are. Anyway most people (are?) bird-watchers because they like knowing what’s going on around them, they observe them and the more you find out about birds and the more you know about what they look like and what they are sound like and how they behave, the more interesting they become and I think that in the old days, you know two hundred years ago and certainly in medieval times or in Shakespeare’s time everybody was very much connected with nature. Yeah. They knew everything about the birds and the plants and the seasons. They felt connected with the seasons and now we live in… 80% of us live in a big cities and we’re disconnected from nature. I think it’s a great pity that and I think it’s nice to be able to hear a bird this time of the year in the spring singing and know what it is and know something about it. So that’s why I advocate people to find out a little bit about birds. Take note of them, have a look of them. What are they doing and see if you can identify them. Usually, they’re just flying around, aren’t they? Oh they’re always doing something interesting. Just pecking things, but no, they are beautiful. I love bird-watching too and if you have a good look, not… you see a lot of people, when you say birds they just think pigeons, don’t they? You know, I don’t like birds but I mean, that they don’t like pigeons or, you know, seagulls or something but there are so many more birds and they are often very beautiful, beautiful plumage and they sing nicely as well. Brilliantly, I have listen to a blackbird, quite a common bird, a blackbird singing in our garden just before we came here. Unbelievably beautiful !
Blackbird, that’s not a crow because everyone always thinks that a Blackbird is a crow. Crows are large birds (that ?) are black and they go “Cahhh, Cahhh, Cahhh…” like that, but a blackbird is like from that Paul McCartney song “Blackbird”. Indeed. How’s the blackbird song go? Oh Dear, I can’t… it is very very lazy and fluent, okay? Sounds a little bit like me? It does these phrases and then it finishes with a very sharp bit at the end and it kind of rule an extra bit and every phrase is different every time it does it and then it repeats everything. So the blackbird has this fluent lazy sound . Wow, okay? So listen out Ladies and Gentlemen, next time when you’re in the country side, listen to the birds. They’re pretty beautiful actually, or pretty beautiful. So I dropped the T there, didn’t I? I’m sorry about that. My Dad normally doesn’t like it when I do that but he’s cool with it these days.
Em, right so, next question is from Francesco and he says ” Good afternoon, Mister Thompson. How did he know it’s the afternoon, I wonder? Well, he was probably guessing but good afternoon Francesco. A few months ago, Luke uploaded an episode about the Maya people and their prophecy about the end of the world. What did you think, what do you think about them? What do you think about the Mayans and their, you know apparent prophecies about the end of the world? Well, I don’t want to waste too much time on this one. Obviously the prophecies of the end of the world were completely nuts and anybody who believe in these things … they need their head examining but I think the Mayans actually have been misreported on this. I don’t really think that the whole Mayan culture was, was devoted the idea the world was get to end at a certain time on a certain day. It’s just the way it’s been interpreted.
I mean obviously these, these, bizarre beliefs are complete nonsense and I’m saying that with total confidence. If we all get destroy tomorrow I shall retract this statement. Yeah, okay, if the world ends tomorrow then you’ll apologize. I’ll say I’m sorry, yes. If the world ends tomorrow then you’ll apologize on Tuesday, how about that? Okay.
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