By SANDY BURGHAM
I caught the knowledge wave last week in my own small and rather lateral way: I had dinner with Edward de Bono.
While I would like you to believe that international mega-thinker Edward, in his brief trip to New Zealand, had an audience with me high on his priority list - before, in fact, meeting the Prime Minister - it was not quite that way.
It was a social thing and I was but one of 12 women handpicked for their supposed fabulousness to dine with Ed.
My initial reaction was of both flattery and discomfort. Was I really game to be a mere side dish in a smorgasbord of females served up to indulge a gentle old flirt? (I had heard it wasn't the first dinner he had enjoyed with an all-female cast). The answer was: of course.
I was initially disturbed to find that the seating arrangement had the most beautiful woman in the world on Edward's right and me to his left.
Was this for contrast? We certainly were not framing him like a pair of finely crafted bookends. Would he notice me? Maybe I was there simply to keep his glass replenished.
A famous television advertisement sprung to mind. In it, an ordinary bloke found to his horror he was sitting next to Henry Kissinger on a long-haul flight. How he wished he had sharpened up on that general knowledge. I felt his pain.
Luckily, Edward was an excellent conversationalist, going out of his way to bring himself down to my size by, for instance, feeding me dirty jokes and trivial statistics which I readily absorbed so, at a later date, I could trot them out at dinner parties to seem far more entertaining than I actually am.
He seems to know absolutely everything, which must be an awfully handy quality to possess. I kicked myself for not bringing a list of things I always wanted to know. It would have been more instantly gratifying than buying Max Cryer's latest book, which professes to answer life's curly ones.
Fortunately, Edward's large brain could readily handle what must have been a confusing main course. While the goddess on his right focused on witty repartee, I played a sort of Kim Hill role (on a passive day), firing questions at him.
During a pregnant pause my Kim Hill re-enactment collapsed into breakfast television mode. As an ice-breaker I commented on his tie: "Edward, I hear you are a tie-lover, please explain to our viewers."
He showed me the one he was wearing which, on closer inspection, seemed to feature sperm and a handmade sticker saying "on offer".
"Oh, Edward, hahahaha, you are a one," I exclaimed, while quietly pondering what on earth did this mean? His superior sense of humour is obviously way over my head.
The evening was all taken in good stead, bar one high-flying female who had come up from Wellington for the event thinking she was attending some sort of powerhouse knowledge wave dinner.
Oh dear, she didn't really get into the party games designed to display Edward's incredible powers of perception, which, like a mere mortal, waned after a couple of drinks.
And then there was my drunk girlfriend, who was badly behaved, surly and rude, declaring that she had met far more interesting famous people than he and that, in any case, she was far brainier. "Yes, dear. Shhhhhh, Edward's talking."
So what did I learn from the experience of being part of the troupe of de Bono court jesters?
Well, I now have some new dirty jokes clean enough to tell my children and some random stats that will make me seem really brainy. But the big lesson was in the confirmation that fame is more important than looks.
I am not talking about humble me versus Helen of Troy on Edward's other flank. But about Edward who, no oil painting himself, had the pulling power to entice 12 interesting and accomplished women to have dinner with him, and get away with it. All this on a school night.
The incentive was not a free feed at a new place-to-be-seen-at, but rather the opportunity to be part of a gaggle of Edward-watchers.
And apart from the miffed Wellingtonian and my bad drunk friend, we all thoroughly enjoyed it.
Indeed, the real point to this column is to name-drop. But as one unimpressed family member put it when I purposefully announced I was dining with Edward de Bono that night, "Edward de Bono, who's he? Cher's husband?"
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