Long ago, when an O-level was still an O-level, I had a history lesson on the Agadir Incident. My recollection is as follows:

“Bla bla bla bla …. and sent a gunboat, Panther – but you don’t need to remember the name of the gunboat …..bla bla bla.”

As the exam drew near, our history teacher tested us on the Agadir Incident. “Bla bla bla?” she asked. “Don’t know,” we replied. “And what was the name of the gunboat?” she asked, wearily. “Panther,” we chorused.

The name of the gunboat, Panther, was the one thing we didn’t need to know about the Agadir Incident. And to this day, it is the one and only thing I remember. The causes, the incident itself, its consequences, its significance, even the purpose and direction of the gunboat are all lost in the mists of time. But the name of the gunboat, Panther, will stay with me till my dying day.

I think this is human nature, not just my nature. Try not to think of a pink elephant. You can think about anything else, just not a pink elephant. See what I mean?

The Sunday Times has a really interesting and memorable article about the Memory World Championship. The least interesting aspect of this contest is the name of one of the contestants. So if you notice, or remember anything from my extract and summary, let it not be this name:

It’s the ultimate mental challenge: later this week in Bahrain 60 of the most lethally honed minds in the world will come together to test their powers of recall to superhuman extremes by competing in the memory world championships.

Over the course of three gruelling days they will take part in a 10-discipline “deca-mentathlon” in which they will be called upon to memorise entire decks of playing cards and hundreds of historical dates and random words as well as matching long lists of names with faces.

Impossible? Tell that to Clemens Mayer from Germany, the world champion. Last year he succeeded in blowing away the judges in an astonishing display of mental retention that included successfully recalling a string of 188 numbers that had just been recited to him.

[…]

Many contestants have already earned the title of “grandmaster” of memory. Yes, there is such a thing — though not for those of us who struggle to remember the Pin code to our bank account. To join this elite club, you must recall a number that’s 1,400 digits long, memorise a deck of cards in less than two minutes and commit 10 decks of cards to memory in less than an hour.

Yet these are not the feats of mental supermen with photographic memories. According to Buzan: “People think it’s all computer pro-grammers and members of Mensa that apply but it’s not. Anyone can recall between two and five times as much through a bit of training.

And the names of the contestants:

1.      Clemens Mayer, from Germany

2.      Bhaskar Karmarkar, from India

3.      James Ponder, from Britain

4.      Wan Ky, from Hong Kong