Just before Christmas I stumbled on a random but interesting fact about something. I felt certain that said fact wasn’t widely known, and so everybody – apart from the cleverest of clever dicks – would find it diverting. I was in a hurry to share; such a hurry, in fact, that I found it frustrating to conform to conversational norms. You know, finding a way of steering the subject matter into the right area so you can lob in your fact-bomb all casual-like.
I resolved instead to just drop it in, apropos of nothing at all, whenever it suited me. My inspiration for this was my dad, who is only too happy to come out with random stuff completely out of the blue. For example: “Did you know that UHT milk is much improved? It now tastes like normal milk, so there’s no point buying normal milk any more.” At first I found this kind of thing from him amusing, then annoying. But ultimately I felt envious. How liberating just to be able to come right out with it.
Oh yes, my fact: Americans eat hardly any lamb. Who knew? Not a lot of people, I can tell you. Apart from Americans, obviously. Being new to the art of just coming out with random stuff, it took a while to get the hang of it. Just wanging it in there, in the middle of an unrelated conversation about, say, West Brom’s ownership or the traffic on the M6, really didn’t work. I’ve found the best way is to wait for a lull in the conversation and then strike. “Here’s a thing,” I’ll say – a little phrase like that helps. “Did you know that Americans hardly eat any lamb?” OK, there was the odd “Eh?” or “So what?” But in general this new approach works like a dream. I feel so free.
Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and Guardian columnist
