As I mentioned in a previous entry, I was in the airport at the weekend attempting to fly to the UK. I won't go through the whole saga again, you can read the previous posting to see what happened.
At one point during the saga, our plane had to return to the terminal due to a recurring technical fault. The pilot's voice came over the public address system to say that an identical plane was parked next to where we would arrive and there would therefore be a straight swap of passengers and luggage between the two planes.
Simple enough except as almost always happens at times like these, people herd together like sheep near a cliff, each uncertain of what exactly is happening and where exactly they should walk. In any event we walked into the terminal building and headed for gate A4, as stated by the pilot and aircrew as we were leaving the defective aircraft.
As we arrived at gate A4 it was clear that nobody was manning the gate and people were without the most basic information, such as what time the flight would leave, what happens when you have a connecting flight that you will likely miss and so on.
I was standing there with 2 colleagues when I heard this male voice behind me. "Excuse me sir, are you on the London flight?". Sir? The last time anyone called me "Sir" was in Atlanta almost 5 years ago. Aside from that it was an English accent, definitely an English accent.
I turned around and there facing me was a face I recognised for sure. I knew his face from many years before. He was an actor on UK television and I remembered that he had starred in a fairly non-event of a TV series called Hollyoaks. I could not for the life of me recollect his name, nor was I sure I ever knew his name in the first place. Either way I did recognise him.
A little voice in my head, maybe in the brain room (for fans of The Numskulls) was shouting "that's that bloke from Hollyoaks" and I was genuinely excited for some bizarre reason. I remember having the same feeling many years ago when walking along the pavement on St. Stephen's Green in Dublin and realising that Billy Connolly was walking right in front of me. Come to think of it I'm the sort of person that is constantly scanning the throng where I stand so that if there is one famous face in a million I'm likely to see that face.
Anyway, I caught myself getting a little excited and told myself to be careful not to look too excited or impressed. In fact I think what I told myself was to look like I had no clue who he was.
Either way I don't think I did much of a job of feigning it. It was only moments afterwards after I had explained what the situation was with the flight and he had gone back to sit with his girlfriend that I realised that he knew I knew who he was. I started thinking about the work of Paul Ekman and how his ideas are presented in Gladwell's "Blink!". The idea that you think the thought first and it then appears on your face was well and truly put to bed in that book. It was made abundantly clear that it appears on the face first and then is processed on a conscious level.
I got back from the UK last night and just had to find out this guy's name. I'm not really sure why, well in fact I am sure why but it's beyond the realm of this current posting. Anyhow his name is Ben Hull (sounds like his parents were Charlton Heston fans with a sense of humour) and he was indeed in Hollyoaks for maybe 6 years. He's now starring in some other programme about Doctors, or the Police or something of consequence on UK television.
I'm certain that Ben Hull knew the moment he saw my face that I recognised him. I'm equally sure that his expression to me was along the lines of "do you know what.. forget it mate".
Rapid cognition is powerful when you tap into it and annoying when you forget about it. By-and-large we humans are pretty awful at faking it.
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