Blimey. That was a hectic few days. Better Humans? seemed to capture the imagination of the media this week so I’ve been dashing around doing interviews. On Wednesday morning the car arrived at 6.15am to take me to the BBC to do 13 local radio interviews around the country.
I’ve done GNS (as it’s called in BBC speak) a couple of times before, but I got the feeling this was the topic that most animated the listeners and I’ve had a few messages from producers saying that they had lots of calls from people after I’d been on air giving their views. It’s a bit frustrating that I didn’t get the chance to listen to them.
We also got the prime spots on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and on BBC Breakfast on TV as well as being well and truly plugged on Radio 4’s Start the Week on Monday.
And just to recap on print coverage:
Madeleine Bunting wrote an editorial in the Guardian.
Steven Rose’s piece from the book was in the Observer.
Our interview with Aubrey de Grey ran in openDemocracy.
The Financial Times ran an editorial by my co-editor James Wilsdon on Wednesday (registration required).
The Guardian website ran an interview with me yesterday.
And I’ve lost count of the mentions on blogs…
The launch event on Wednesday at the Wellcome Trust was packed and I thought was really interesting. Aubrey (who’s 42) did tell me that his mum was a bit annoyed to read in our interview that he swears though.
So I think we managed to achieve what we set out to do which was get a debate going. And there’s more to come as the conference at Oxford in March will attract even more attention to the issues.
