Will Chatham

I received an email today regard­ing my fin­ger­nail clip­ping col­lec­tion. It was from the BBC and it read:

Sub­ject: BBC 3 Show
Mes­sage:
I stum­bled across your web­site and noticed your box of toe nail clip­pings. WE are cur­rently look­ing for peo­ple to take part in an excit­ing new show about peo­ple with funny habits. I won­dered if you would be inter­ested in talk­ing about your col­lec­tion of nails? Are you UK based? It would be great if you could email me a con­tact tele­phone num­ber so that we can have a chat? Or your email address?

I was excited to find out they wanted to film me, as pre­vi­ous inter­views I have done were all on radio sta­tions (in New Zealand, for some rea­son. I’m big in New Zealand).

So I wrote back and told them I’d be happy to do it. How­ever, they replied:

Hi Will,
Thank you for your email. That’s a shame that you live in the US, do you know of any­one with a sim­i­lar habit who lives in the UK?

Laura Steb­bing
Researcher

A shame I live in the US? A bit dis­ap­pointed, I wrote her back in an overtly sar­cas­tic tone:

Well, I don’t think it’s a shame, really. I actu­ally like it here.

I’ll have to dig out my “Inter­na­tional Direc­tory of Fin­ger­nail Clip­ping Col­lec­tors, 2010 Edi­tion” and get back to you on the name of some­one in the UK who col­lects their nails with whom you can speak. We are a tight-knit club whose loose lips tend to sink ships, so find­ing some­one may be dif­fi­cult. I will let you know.

Sin­cerely,
Will

I fig­ured that would be the end of it, or that she would reply with some­thing equally as snarky. Appar­ently, my “humour” excaped her:

Hi Will,
Thank you, any help would be very much appre­ci­ated and please let me know if you have any ques­tions. We are cur­rently film­ing in the UK, so
any­one UK based would be great.

Thanks again,
Laura.

Maybe the period at the end of her name was her way of say­ing “You jerk, I would tell you what I think of you but my email is being mon­i­tored by my bosses, so I can’t.”

What­ever the case, I thought that con­ver­sa­tion was too good not to share.