Yes Man by Danny Wallace Page B

plantation. It became a symbol of all that was right with the humble banana, somewhere for dedicated banana fans to centre their energies and focus their banana-based efforts.
    And it also meant that from 1963 onward, John Landi sold a
lot
more bananas.
    Perhaps for that reason the idea took off.
    Almost immediately Australians of the north, south, east, and west realised that they could draw major national attention to their farms, their businesses, and even their hobbies just by building huge, colourful statues in honour of whatever was at the core of their obsession. From Sydney to the Sunshine Coast, just like Lizzie had told me, these Big Things began to line the highways and byways of Australia. Naturally some garnered more praise and plaudits than others … the Big Pineapple of 1972, experts agree, is probably the most successful of all the Big Things, and in the seventies and early eighties really brought pineapples and pineapple-related issues to the foreground. But the Big Oyster, a towering testament to the vast oyster beds of the Manning River region, is something that few Australians like to talk about. It plays, they will tell you with their eyes fixed to the floor, a sad second fiddle to the Big Prawn, only a few miles to the north.
    I was beginning to really love Big Things. And right now, sitting in an office at the BBC, I was clicking my way around the Web, finding out all about them. I was fascinated. And I was slowly finding my favourites, too. The Big Rock, for example (imagine that!), or the Big Avocado, to be found at Duranbah’s popular theme park, Tropical Fruit World (formerly known as Avocado Adventureland, an experience which sounds only marginally more appealing than an afternoon at my very own Shelf Adventure).
    “Dan, can I have a word?”
    It was my boss’s voice, and I spun round in my chair, deftly quitting the Internet as I did so in order to hide the words
Tropical Fruit World
from my screen. Sadly all it did was bring up the game of Minesweeper I’d been playing earlier, but my boss politely ignored it.
    “Listen, say no if you don’t want to, but there’s a meeting over at TV Centre later this week—some kind of development thing—and they want someone from radio to attend. Everyone I’ve asked seems very busy all of a sudden. Funny how everyone gets busy when there’s something they don’t want to say yes to. So how about you? Can you make it?”
    “Yes!” I said, proud that I was bucking the trend. “Definitely. What kind of meeting is it again?”
    “Development. The usual thing. People sitting around coming up with ideas. But you’re up for it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. Great. I’ll tell them. Thanks, Dan. And enjoy Tropical Fruit World.”
    He closed the door, and I decided I’d better get on and do some work.
    Working from home is a great thing, but so is working from BBC Broadcasting House—home to a thousand scruffy, cardiganed radio producers. Part of my freelance contract demanded that I spend a couple of days a week sitting in one of the offices here, working up ideas, and that was just dandy by me.
    I’d worked for the BBC ever since leaving university, when I’d somehow talked my way into a six-month traineeship in the Light Entertainment department, and now here I was, a bona-fide Light Entertainment producer, a few years shy of thirty and my first-ever cardigan. What qualifies as Light Entertainment I’ve never been sure, though you and I both now know that cardigans are involved, and I’m fairly sure it also has something to do with Nicholas Parsons.
    But Broadcasting House is a fantastic place to work, steeped as it is in glorious radio history—from Churchill’s wartime addresses to the comedy of The Goons—and it was always with a sense of genuine pride that I walked through the huge, brass doors with my special BBC pass clipped to my jeans. Fair enough, it’s not as if I was the man charged with making the type of quality journalism that the