And then there was the time when I was almost on television.
Okay, “almost” is a bit of a stretch; it’s not like I was in a studio waiting to walk out in front of a camera and then something happened, or whatever. This all happened more than a decade ago, when I still had hair and lived in Scotland – those two things aren’t actually linked, I should point out – and, more importantly, the internet still seemed new enough to be a thing, as opposed to just a fact of life.
Through a friend, I somehow ended up becoming linked to a television show that someone was working on. I’m still not entirely clear about how it happened, beyond “We need someone who knows about the internet,” “Oh, I know a guy who’s gone on the internet,” “That’s great, we’ll use him!” but I remember being asked by said friend whether or not I’d be willing to be on TV talking about the internet for some new show that someone was working on. Stupidly, I said yes.
There are two reasons why this was a bad decision:
- I didn’t know that much about the internet. Admittedly, this was a time when “not knowing that much” still meant that I knew more than most people, although I’d become an early adopter entirely by accident and because I went online to try and find a message board mentioned in a comic once. At the time all of this was happening, I was still teaching in the local art school, and had even been asked to present an hour-long talk about internet design. That did not go over well.
- Back then, as now, I hate public speaking. Absolutely am terrified of it, find it one of the most horrific, uncomfortable experiences I can imagine, the whole shebang (That’s just one reason why I was a terrible teacher at the art school I worked at, at the time). If, at any point, I had realized that being on television would require lots of public speaking of a sort, I would have recoiled in terror. Instead, I just heard “television” and thought, hey, that would be fun.
So I said yes, and for months went between feeling unspeakable terror at the thought of actually being on television and excitement at the idea of having what could be a fun, unusual job. But the show never happened. To be fair, there came a point fairly early on when I realized that would likely be the case, when I asked to meet the producers and was told by the friend who’d tipped me for the thing that, maybe, that wouldn’t be the best thing at that precise moment or perhaps for the next few months… But occasionally, I find myself wondering what would’ve happened if the show had happened, and I’d have ended up on the air, even for a short time.
Oh, if only my hair had been that good at any point of my life.
