The Tuesday Night Interview

Last year I made a short TV programme about a foreigner who marries a Chinese girl and all the problems he encounters with the culture differences - with hilarious consequences, of course. Well, I'd forgotten about it, but then the director gives me a call last week, saying it was going to be broadcast the next day, and I should go to the studio to participate in the 'after-broadcast' interview, live on Local TV. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to make a fool of myself not once but twice (all in the same evening), I of course agreed.







Things got off to a bad start when, just before doing the interview along with the other cast members, I had to dash to the bathroom. In my haste, I failed to notice the skirted silhouette on the door, so halfway through some female members of the production crew got a bit of a shock when they opened the door to the lockless-cubicle. 'Dignified' it was not.







During pre-filming preparations, they ran through the questions the presenters were likely to ask us. They asked me what I thought of Shaanxi women. My answer of 'I don't know, can't really tell the difference [between Shaanxi and non-Shaanxi women]' was considered an affront to the good women of Shaanxi. They said 'er, no, a better answer is 'fiery''. The programme is normally conducted in local language (the TV station is the provincial station, available to the 60 million residents of Shaanxi Province), but they made an exception for me. It's a nightly programme, and not hugely popular (fortunately).







The interview was 25 minutes long, and live, so I was a shade nervous. I introduced myself in local language, then after used Mandarin to field the questions directed at me. Questions mostly concerned my thoughts on international marriages (like that in the programme) and whether I could see myself living in Shaanxi. I mostly understood what they asked me, and it went pretty well, but it didn't quite have the easy back-and-forth of a Parkinson interview.







Later in the programme, the presenters read out some viewers comments. They asked me if I knew someone called Jiang Nan, because he said he knew me. I looked blankly and said 'No'. Embarrassed faces all round, until I suddenly remembered who it was, and corrected myself. Honestly, Chinese names are incredibly hard to remember, causing numerous awkward moments.







It's been a few days since this was broadcast, and I can't say I've had a huge number of autograph hunters and papparazzi hounding me - none, in fact, to be precise. Still, I'm sure that phonecall from China Central Television is just seconds away.