Jump to: navigation, search

The Sunday Times (22/Nov/1998) - Modern face of mnemonics ends Memory Man's unforgettable run

(c) The Sunday Times (22/Nov/1998)


Modern face of mnemonics ends Memory Man's unforgettable run

We'll never forget old whatshisname. For 35 years he has been the original Memory Man, but now his face no longer fits.

One photograph of Derek Derbyshire taken in 1963 has probably appeared in newspapers across the world more times than any single image of the Queen.

It is used to promote a Pounds 200 correspondence course to improve memory and concentration. The advertisements have appeared regularly, almost unchanged, for more than a third of century, so that today the wording is rather quaint: "At parties and dinners you may never again be at a loss for appropriate words or entertaining stories."

Unchanged until now, that is. The family firm of R & W Heap of Marple, near Stockport in Cheshire, is updating its image by using a young male model, Mark Goodwin, in its advertisements under the familiar heading "Why does your memory fail you?"

So it will soon be thanks for the memories for Derbyshire, 68. His image has helped convince more than 20,000 Britons a year to sign up for a course based on the mnemonic studies of Dr Bruno Furst, a German lawyer who fled to the United States before the war and conceived a system to aid the memory.

The system, named after Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, relies on using imagery and association between numbers and letters. R & W Heap spend up to Pounds 350,000 a year on advertising, but annual turnover from this course and others is Pounds 1m.

Not that Derbyshire, a 33-year-old Manchester-based accountant when the photograph was taken, has benefited from the cottage industry. He was paid just three guineas (Pounds 3.15).

Last week The Sunday Times traced him and Rita, his wife, to their home in Solihull. He said: "The joke in the family has always been that if I received a penny for every time my photograph had been used I would have been a millionaire by now. Not even Charles Atlas lasted as long."

He added: "I don't begrudge the company its profits. I have enjoyed being the Memory Man for so long. The advertisements were worded so that people did not know if I was the sap who needed the memory training or the one who had written this wonderful book."

Derbyshire never enjoyed the personal fame of other memory men such as Jimmy Bottle, who used the stage name Datas - catchphrase "Am I right, sir?" - and was immortalised in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Thirty-Nine Steps.

But he does have a good memory. "I don't think I have ever forgotten a birthday, a wedding aniversary or a business appointment," he said.