How to Develop a Perfect Memory (17 page)

The question came out as a mumble. I think he was concentrating more on

what my briefcase might be saying. I asked him to repeat it and he turned, victorious, to address the audience, 'You see! Have any of you noticed how often he has to have the question repeated?'

Everyone stared at their shoes, as only the English can do when a public row breaks out. I finally established what the question was, 'How old was Anna Kournikova in May 1992 when she was described at the finest tennis prospect of the century?'

'Ten,' I replied automatically. The man threw down his card in disgust, and walked off saying, It's a fiddle, it's a fiddle.'

It wasn't, of course. He failed to appreciate the brief chain of mental events that had provided me with the answer. Two key words 'Anna' and 'tennis', were enough to trigger an image of a tennis court (location) I had once played on in Hertfordshire. It was owned by a friend of mine called 'Annie'. I could vaguely see a man playing the piano on the tram lines: it was Dudley Moore from the film
10.
This strange image provided me with my answer.

Needless to say, nobody won any prize-money that day, and the insurer's

£5,000 was returned safely to the bank.

THE METHOD

As I promised, almost all the hard work in this book came in the early chapters.

The method for memorizing
Trivial Pursuit
cards is very similar to the technique you used for putting names to faces.

1. Seize on a key word (or words) in the question and let it suggest to you a random location. It doesn't matter how absurd it is, provided that the association is instant. You are simply trying to ensure that the next time you hear that key word, the same location comes into your head.

2. Take a look at the answer. Grab hold of any associated image that flashes across your mind. Again, it is essential that you stick with the first image.

3. Using your imagination, link the location and image together

EXAMPLES

In the following examples, I am giving you my personal associations for the purposes of demonstration. Yours might be a good deal more imaginative!

Q: What material is the Cricket World Cup trophy made from?

A: Glass.

The key word is 'cricket', and the obvious location is Lord's Cricket Ground. (If you can't picture a famous setting, use a local pitch.) 'Glass' suggests an image of an expensive cut-glass bowl. Linking the two together, I imagine the bowl balanced precariously on the stumps at Lord's (Taverner's end); I hear the glass shatter as it is smashed by an unplayable off-cutter.

Q: Which country's coast witnessed the battle of Trafalgar?

A: Spain.

The key word is 'Trafalgar' which suggests Trafalgar Square as a location. I often use an image of a matador for anything Spanish. I imagine him waving a red rag in front of one of the lions at the foot of Nelson's Column.

Q: What is the alternative name for a cavy?

A: A guinea pig.

The key word is 'cavy'. This sounds a bit like cave. Most of us have visited a cave at some time in our lives. I would use a cave I know in Ireland as the location. The ready made image of a guinea pig needs to be strengthened in some way. I imagine a huge family of guinea pigs emerging from the mouth of the cave.

The images for some questions and answers require a little more invention, but they are still based on immediate associations. Here is another example: Q: What knot are you said to cut if you overcome a major difficulty?

A: Gordian.

The key words are 'knot' and 'difficulty'. When I hear the word 'knot' I immediately think of a certain estuary in Ireland where, as a young boy, I first came across knots. It's a very strong location for me. I spent a long, depressing day fishing for brown trout, and most of my time was taken up untangling my line.

For my image, I split Gordian into two, Gordon and Ian, which happen to be the names of two friends of mine. I imagine Gordon and Ian at the riverbank, helping me overcome my difficulties with the fishing tackle. What's the first thing to enter
your
mind when you hear the word 'knot'?

The method works providing you seize your first association when confronted with a key word. By all means explore the association (it's a fascinating area, as anyone who has played word association games will vouch), but don't over-analyse why the word reminds you of a particular place. Trust that your mental chain of events, no matter how far-fetched, will repeat itself when you come to read the question at a later date.

In all the above examples, I have streamlined my final image to give me the answer and nothing else. Take the question I was asked at Hamley's. I was simply trying to get to the number ten. The year 1992 was irrelevant, as was the surname, Kournikova, and the fact that she was described as the finest tennis prospect this century was of no consequence at all.

If you ever come across information that is of particular interest to you, and you want to remember every detail, simply add the relevant elements to your overall image.

REVISION

If you want to memorize
Trivial Pursuit,
the Annual Edition is a good place to start. It has 1,500 questions. As I said earlier, you should aim to memorize them at a rate of three a minute. You may find it takes you considerably longer to begin with, but the process will speed up. In order for the information to be stored on a long term-basis, you must revise regularly.

Find your own level of retention. You might need to look at the cards again within minutes, or after twenty-four hours. Personally, my first revision takes place after forty-eight hours, and then I can retain the information for months on end. So far, I've never been caught out on a single question.

THE JONATHAN ROSS SHOW

I have had to remember some daft things in my time. I was once asked by

Jonathan Ross to memorize the first word on every page of Jilly Cooper's novel
Polo
for his TV show. The paperback version consists of no less than 766

pages. I set about this unusual task by planning eight journeys, each with fifty stages. I would need 383 stages in total if I placed two words on each one. To make the words more memorable, I gave them symbols, usually people: 'and'

became 'Andrew', 'the' became 'Thea', 'you' became 'ewe'.

I received the book the day before the show was televised. By mid-after-noon, I had memorized all 766 words.

Just before the show, copies of the book were handed out to 150 members of the studio audience. Each person was given a set page number. If they were chosen, they could call out their number and personally verify that I had memorized the right word.

Jonathan Ross explained to the audience before I came on that certain words had been chosen in preference to others, to avoid repetition of dull ones such as 'to', 'and', 'of', 'a', 'it,'
etc.
As usual, there were the inevitable sceptics. No sooner had I walked on to the stage than someone at the back started shouting:

'Fix! Fix!'

It wasn't a good start, but the heckling triggered off the following series of images: 'Jim'll fix it' Saville jogging down a leafy lane in Surrey complete with fat cigar and chunky gold chains. He was at the first position on the second stage of the seventh journey.

Within three seconds of hearing the word 'fix', I told the audience to turn to page 703. There was a frantic rustling of pages and, sure enough, the first word at the top of that page was 'fix'.

Thankfully, my sceptic shut up after that, and I could continue to demonstrate my memory skills in front of a trusting audience.

18

MEMORY AND

SPORT

LEARNING THE FA CUP

If you are one of those people who likes to know who won in the 1949 FA Cup final (Wolverhampton Wanderers), or which horse won the Grand National in 1909 (Lutteur III), then this chapter is for you. Before I go on, however, I must declare a disinterest: I am not a football fanatic. I just happen to know the results of every FA cup match since its inception back in 1872 (when the final was held at the Kennington Oval and the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1-0). As Leslie Welch discovered in the 1950s, this sort of sporting knowledge goes down very well with the public, which is why I include it in my stage act.

It's also incredibly easy to memorize if you use a simple journey. Each year of the FA Cup is represented by a separate stage. The individual teams and scores are translated into persons and actions.

CHOOSING YOUR JOURNEY

One of the journeys I use for football begins in the goal-mouth of our local ground. Because I have to carry around so many routes in my head, each one storing a different sort of information, it helps if the beginning of the journey is somewhere appropriate. The journey I use to store golfing information, for example, starts at a familiar golf course; the one for horse racing results begins at nearby stables; another for motor racing starts at a local garage, and so on.

Here are the first ten stages of my FA Cup journey, with corresponding years: STAGE

YEAR

STAGE

YEAR

Goal-mouth

1901

Car park

1906

Centre of pitch

1902

Driveway

1907

Stands

1903

Ground entrance

1908

Changing room

1904

Petrol station

1909

Clubhouse

1905

Roundabout

1910

Personally, I use three separate journeys to remember the FA Cup, but there is no reason why you shouldn't use one long, epic route. I find that breaking it down into three helps me access the information more quickly.

First journey: results from 1872-1900. This is a normal 50 stage route,

except that I start at the 22nd stage. Second journey: results from 1901-1950.

A normal route with 50 stages. Third journey: results from 1951-2000. Another 50 stage route, allowing me to update the information as we progress towards the millenium.

This approach allows me to locate instantly, for example, the result of the 1984 final between Everton and Watford: I simply go to the 34th stage of the third journey. (Everton won 2-0.)

FORMING YOUR IMAGES

There are four basic pieces of information to memorize when you are learning the FA Cup: the year, the winner, the runner up, and the score. The year is taken care of by the stage (1903 is at the third stage); the other three pieces of information can be translated into a single complex image, the sort you formed when learning how to memorize numbers in Chapter 4. The process is very

simple:

Winner, Loser, Score = Person, Action, Person.

The choice of person and action for the winner and loser is entirely up to you, but you should follow the same principles as before. Use your imagination, and let the names of the teams suggest people to you. The first association is the most important.

It might be someone you know who is a fan of the team in question, or even a star player, a manager, a chief executive. Some people think of Gordon Strachan when they think of Leeds United, or Mark Hughes when they think of Manchester United. The obvious action for Arsenal is firing a cannon, the club's symbol.

If your knowledge of the game is limited, your associations might be more tangential. I imagine Robin Hood when I think of Nottingham Forest, and the action of firing an arrow. For Crystal Palace, I think of Richard O'Brien, the presenter of TV's
The Crystal Maze.

To remember the score, use the DOMINIC SYSTEM to convert the figures

into letters, which in turn translate into people. If the result is 3-2, for example, your person is Cilla Black.

The easiest way to combine person, action, and person in one complex

image is by inventing a short storyline. So if Crystal Palace were ever to beat Nottingham Forest 3-2, I would imagine the bald O'Brien loosing an arrow in Cilla Black's direction. To make the scene more palatable, I would place an apple on Cilla's head.

Here are the results from 1901-1910, broken down into their constituent

parts:

YEAR

WINNER

LOSER

SCORE

(Stage)

(Person)

(Action)

(person)

1901

Tottenham Hotspur

Sheffield United

3-1

1902

Sheffield Utd

Southampton

2-1

1903

Bury

Derby County

6-0

1904

Manchester City

Bolton Wanderers

1-0

1905

Aston Villa

Newcastle United

2-0

1906

Everton

Newcastle United

1-0

1907

Sheffield Wednesday

Everton

2-1

1908

Wolverhampton Wanderers

Newcastle United

3-1

1909

Manchester United

Bristol City

1-0

1910

Newcastle United

Barnsley

2-0

And this is how I remember some of them:

1901 Tottenham Hotspur vs Sheffield United 3-1

Year: 1901. The first stage of my second journey is the goal-mouth at my local club, which denotes 1901. Winner: Whenever I hear Tottenham Hotspur mentioned, I automatically think of Bob, my agent. He's a dedicated Spurs supporter. Loser: If no obvious association springs to mind, I rely on phonetics.

The first syllable of Sheffield United is 'Sheff', which makes me think of a chef, whose action is cooking. Score: Using the DOMINIC SYSTEM, 3-1

translates into Charles Atlas (3 = C; 1 = A). Complex image: I imagine Bob dressed in full chefs apron and wearing a big white hat, preparing an enormous meal for a starving Charles Atlas who is sitting in the goal-mouth.

1907 Sheffield Wednesday vs Everton 2-1

Year: The seventh stage (1907) is the driveway leading up to the ground.

Winner: To avoid confusion with Sheffield United, I concentrate on the word

'Wednesday'. This gives me a clear image of actress Wendy Craig. Loser: