What's Your Best On The Spot Bowhead Whale

A telly presenter calling himself Blowfish (left) was loosely promoting Marine Awareness Week, along with his new book, on vacuous pr-driven weekend daytime sofas. Except this involved a couple of fish tanks with threatened corals and fish.

With his plug by way of subheading, 291 Extraordinary Things You Didn’t Know About the Sea, the host instantly interrupted. ‘Goading’ with, “give us one, the best one…”. Our wildlifer stuttered;

Ooh, erm, I don’t know, erm, on the spot, there’s an organ on the inside of the mouth of the Bowhead Whale which lives in the Arctic, that it can flush with blood to swell up. So if the Bowhead Whale gets too hot it can take a mouthful of Arctic water, flush this organ full of blood, and it can cool itself down.

Would that make you seek out the book?

He inadvertently revealed the level of prep immediately through his following relieved exclamation, “whoa, I was under pressure there, that was on the spot, woah dear!”

You can’t help thinking that if your book title features a large number of facts hidden within, then in the hurried world of lazied media impatience, you are going to be asked for a top ten, most wonderful three or, most often, the Number One as you see it.

You always need something like this to pull out of your magic pocket on a sales call. The best new feature, the best client usage, the best money-maker, the best of a sub-type, the best kept secret.

If you do get caught on the hop, then like Mr Blowfish, the one you splutter is bound to fail in providing the best advert for yourself. I know not what’s in the book, but I bet that if you asked him afterwards, he’d have given you a whole string of other – better – examples.

Poor Bowheads. Make sure you swell your sales chances by practising your most ‘extraordinary things’ for perfect recall.