Much excitement!

MARIE: I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ve written several book reviews for the magazine of the Danish Parkinson’s Association – because I am an activist at heart, because the book world is my world, and because it’s one of the few jobs I am able to do for the association from abroad.

For the next issue I am reviewing Michael J. Fox’ latest book Always Looking Up which was recently translated into Danish – because, as we all know, MJF has had Parkinson’s for the last 18 years, and been the world’s foremost PD ambassador and activist since he went public about his diagnosis over a decade ago. I contacted the publisher some time ago to get a review copy, and in his response he said there was a miniscule chance that he could arrange a phone interview. Although I naturally said I’d be immensely interested, I must admit that I thought ‘yeah, right’ and expected to hear nothing more of it.

But suddenly, late Friday afternoon, there was an e-mail from the publisher that they had an opening the following Tuesday and that although MJF would give only one media interview in connection with the Danish edition, they’d like to offer that interview to me. WOW, I thought, immediately followed by OH – MY – GOD! I’ve never done anything remotely like that before, never conducted an interview and never talked to anybody one tenth that famous. When I told the association, they got really excited and immediately decided to clear six pages for interview+review and make this the front-page story – so no pressure there, then.

The weekend was spent researching background and working on questions and playing around with a set-up that would allow me to record the interview – all of which involved much help and advice from Jon. Obviously, I was the most nervous, but I think we were equally excited, when after an interminable day it was at last time to make the call. And it went really well! (Obsessive preparation pays.) I’d been told I would have 20 minutes, but we talked for 40. I had prepared two pages of questions and didn’t expect to get through them all, but in fact I got to think up extra questions as we went along. And, most importantly, the tape recording worked so I can now sit at leisure and extract the best quotes and make sure I remember everything correctly.

I don’t want to come over all star struck here, but I am really impressed by MJF. Sure, giving interviews is part of his job, but he performs that job against heavy odds and with impressive energy. He is knowledgeable, thoughtful and insightful in his answers, and he comes across as a really nice person. I hope I can do him justice in the article!

JON: It was very exciting that Marie got to interview fellow PD-person MJF. No reason to be overmodest when she writes it up here, she certainly has nothing to be modest about and I’m very, very proud of her. As always, though, there is a fly in the ointment: the harder she worked on preparing for the interview, transcribing it afterwards, and now writing it up into a proper article, the less she does for me. Why, only yesterday I had to make my own tea. Imagine my distress!