Probably on the day that that you won,
Oliver, and you were on the front page of the Globe
there were a fair number of people
who if they had seen you that day would
recognize you but, it's not like
being a rock star, largely your
forgotten. In a way, there is something a
bit strange about the whole thing
because, you know, I'm the same person I
was the day before. Suddenly demand has
gone from zero to quite high. I've never
actually been able to bring myself to
tell a fully booked restaurant [laughing]
that maybe they want to
give me a seat.
My work has been particularly about how
in a situation where you can't specify
everything, it's important,
who has the right to decide on the
things which are left out. When you make
a discovery or you do a piece of work,
you might be very excited, but you don't
know that anybody else is going to take
it up.
Eric is an extraordinarily talented
person, he's a multi-talented person,
which I'm not.
He's a fantastic musician, because I've heard
him play, he's a great cook,
he's a formidable arguer, which I've
discovered to my cost, sometimes. And I'm
not like that [laughing]. The argument
part you are.
Yes, yes, I like to argue, but I knew
no economics and I was rather frustrated
when I had political arguments with
people. They sort of introduced some
economic idea and at that point, I lost the
argument that I had no idea what balance
of payments or something,
I just didn't know what it was. And so I
thought well you know, you can kill two
birds with one stone. In my day,
Perry Mason was a very popular TV show
and I thought being able to win all your
cases and get innocent people off was
a great line of work, so I was either
going to do that or play the
clarinet.