A D E V I L TO P L AY19properly. I not just going to take it up. I going to take it on. This is the really stupid part coming up now. I tell myself that it would be good to have a goal. Standing there as the other sixtynine members of the massed horn ensemble pack their instruments into cases on the side of the stage, I think the thing to do is to play something on my own. To these people. The thing to do is to see if I can come back in a year time to the annual festival of the British Horn Society and stand on this stage without sixty-nine other horn players. And play something. A solo. Why I am a self-employed journalist. I spend my day telling other people stories. I interview, therefore I am. Take a bow, all you actors, divas, and ballerinas. Are you reading, you playwrights and poets and novelists Comedians, commentators, presidents, presenters, singers, songwriters, supermodelsheye all emptied their lives into my tape recorder. Rockers and royalty, explorers and chefs, gardeners and mountaineers, winners and losers of Olympics and Oscars, World Cups and world wars. Vegetating on the sofa, I can flick through the satellite channels and see my entire career flash before me. Done him, done her, done them, done the lot. Why, I have even interviewed interviewers. To the bottom of the birdcage these ephemeral words all go. But hey, there always memory to keep them alive. Now and then I come across one of my subjects at a party or an opening and reminisce about that fascinating gladiatorial encounter we had. as it, God, it must be five years ago now,�Il say to them. t was for the . . .�Il name whichever outlet it would have been in. e met in . . .�Il name the location. o, of course, of course . . . no reason why you should . . .�They never remember having met me. And I change the subject back to them. o what are you working on now�But then, why should they I have done nothing to make myself memorable. It was drummed into me in school never to use the
