There are few things worse than trying to engage in conversation someone who plainly does not want to talk to you. As a teenage boy, I went through the pain barrier several times while trying in vain to get a girl interested in me or anything I had to say. But awful as it was, I knew it came with the territory, so I had no choice but to grin and bear it. If anything, the older I get, the harder I find it. And I’m not talking about the dating game here, just normal conversation with civilised people in polite society.
I was at an event, a book launch, hosted by a famous historian. He was not the author of the book in question, but he was the writer of a biography that I happened to be reading. I thought this particular work to be luminously brilliant, so I was keen to have a chat with him. I circled him for a while, waiting for my chance to strike. My dad told me at a very young age that the best thing to talk to people about was their favourite subject, which invariably was themselves. This advice has served me well over the years, and I would be sure to abide by it here. Anxious as ever to avoid talking to someone who plainly wasn’t interested in talking to me, I put some thought into my approach. Phase one: tell him how brilliant I think his book to be. Phase two: share with him my favourite quote from the book. What could possibly go wrong?
