Wednesday 24 Jan 2007 3.45pm (original TX Wednesday 9 August 9.30am)
Most of us take our memories for granted. In this series you'll meet six people who don't have that luxury.
Briton James Kemp is 26 and hoping to be the next World Memory Champion. Ranked inside the world's top 200 memory masters he's in training for the championships which this year are being held in London over the summer. How did he get interested in memory, does he has some special psychological gift or can anyone train their mind to become a champ?
We follow his progress in training leading up to the event and find out about the pros and cons of having an amazing memory. Over three gruelling days, competitors must carry out a series of challengers which include: remembering the order of a randomly shuffled pack of playing cards in as quick a time as possible (current world record is 33 seconds); recall verbatim, including grammar, a piece of poetry after being given a limited time to study it; and recount as many binary digits as possible in order.
In this programme we'll get an insight into some of the tricks and techniques James and others use to turn the mind-numbing into the memorable and show how anyone can improve their learning and memory abilities with dramatic results as long as they're prepared to put in the practise.
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Stacey
Hi, the programme was really very good can you please tell me how can i get the transcript of this as well
John - production team
We are not having transcripts made of these broadcasts but you will always be able to listen again on this site
