Going The Distance

Holy hell, Batman. We’re going to have an audience. And not just a news audience, people, a real live studio audience. We’re booked to appear on Nicaragua’s number one talkshow, Margarita, te voy a contar…

We arrive at the studios at 2pm. On time, for once. Bike parked, into the green room for hair and makeup. Canal 2′s news team quickly ask if they can interview us, so we are ushered outside to the bike for an interview on Nicaraguan news.

News Interview over, we head back to the green room for finishing touches to hair and make up. Helmet Hair tamed by baffled looking Nicaraguan lady who had never ever seen hair as thin as mine… Margarita gives us our questions to look over (interview going to be in Spanish, time to practice) and leaves us alone. Filming on the show starts, but we are not required for about another hour. Which means that the two of us are left alone with a dictionary, our rubbish Spanish, and a whole lot of time to work ourselves into a panic.

It was like waiting for a Spanish GSCE oral exam, knowing that you hadn’t done nearly enough preparation, and that in fact you weren’t going to be asking directions to the town hall to a solitary man in a room but instead answering questions in front of a live studio audience of 100 and potentially a nation of Nicaraguans.

Finally, we were brought out on stage and sat down beside the charming Margarita. I think the audience were fairly baffled – not at all sure that two Brits with a poor grasp of Spanish was what they signed up for. And we were away. Mike remains convinced that he wowed the crowd with his flawless Spanish, dancing through jokes about local musicians and polygamists with a polyglot grace which I’m not sure he possesses. He’s making the edit of the event so no doubt it will be vetted to tell that very tale.

Either way, he got some great laughs out of the audience. I engendered pity, and all in all, the audience seemed to engage with the idea and we got our hand shaken a lot as we left the studio. Interestingly, the audience all formed a long queue to receive a cake as they left the studio. Methinks they might have been bribed to sit through our interview…

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