UFO Info Week-End

I can’t wire a plug or do any DIY but I can cook because that’s like doing

“I can’t wire a plug, or do any DIY, but I can cook, because that’s like doing a sum.” He also finds conversation hard, because he tunes in and out, rather as if he is listening to a radio interrupted by static.He also suffers from anxiety if he goes into a public place where he can’t predict what will happen, although he has learned to calm himself by closing his eyes and counting until the panic passes. He is lucky, he says, to have a sympathetic partner, Neil, and he is happy to spend most of his time at home in Kent, from which he runs an online tutoring business.Tammet’s extraordinary story is the subject of a new documentary, The Boy with the Incredible Brain, part of Channel Five’s ‘Extraordinary People’ series. The programme traces his journey around the world to meet some of the specialists who are interested in his case. They set him a series of tests, one of which was to learn Icelandic within a week He was given a tutor who declared the task impossible. A week later, he appeared on television and gave an interview in perfect Icelandic.He loved Icelandic “I found it aesthetically pleasing.

Icelandic is perfect for an autistic person because it is a very visual language. I think in pictures, and Icelandic works like that, in that abstract words are described in concrete terms. So, for example, the word for garlic means literally ‘white onion’ and the word for carrot means ‘yellow root’ The word for idea is literally ‘mind-picture’. “Like his work with numbers, the way he learns a language is primarily visual. The Linguaphone approach of listening and repeating would not work for him; he has to see it written down.

“A lot of it comes down to pattern-spotting, seeing shapes and structures. Most people learning a language work primarily from grammar tables and verb tables I learn more intuitively than that. My mind is very well wired to patterns, so rather than pulling out the rules, I pull out the patterns.”Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, is one of those interested in what can be learned from Tammet’s case. “When you have an individual who has savant ability, is it because he has synaesthesia or autism or both?” he asks. “Are these two factors necessary to produce this level of talent?”He points out that Asperger syndrome is relatively new as a subject for study in the English-speaking world: Hans Asperger identified the condition in 1944, but his work was only translated from German in the 1990s. And scientists only began to take synaesthesia seriously 20 years ago, when more sophisticated brain scans demonstrated that the experience truly existed No one has yet proved a link with autism.

“That’s something we are still researching,” he says.Tammet himself is pleased with the programme. He found all the travelling stressful, but the best part was meeting Kim Peek, the savant who was the inspiration for the 1988 film Rain Man “We had an immediate connection It was extremely moving. That was the most special part of the whole experience.”‘The Boy with the Incredible Brain’ is on Five on Monday 23 May. It looks like being a long, hard road to retirement for Sir David Manning, the British ambassador in Washington who bizarrely decided to leave the diplomatic service just 18 months after his appointment. Last month, Manning’s staff signed up en masse to a trade union, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, after consultants were brought in to “streamline” operations.Unlike diplomats, who are paid in sterling – which is currently strong against the dollar – support staff at the embassy were already feeling the pinch.

They now intend to boycott the (supposedly morale-boosting) bash.”This is real salt in the wound,” reports my man in the US capital. “Many of the staff have worked there for decades, and feel rightly put out at being charged to attend their own party. Only diplomats and those who want to ‘get on’ will bother to turn up.”On this general election day, a final chance to name and shame one of our political masters for claiming a phoney celebrity endorsement.The Cabinet minister Peter Hain, no less, has been forced to apologise for using a photograph of the Welsh singing star Katherine Jenkins on his election leaflet.Miss Jenkins, who is currently on tour in the US, has no political leanings, but is “absolutely furious” to have been dragged into an election battle in her native Neath.”No permission has been sought or given for this picture to be used,” says her agent.”This is tawdry. I’ve spoken to Hain’s agent who says he is anxious to get hold of Katherine to explain.”But she is not interested in an explanation. What she wants is an apology.”Chunters Hain: “The photo was taken at a local event Katherine is from Neath and we are all very proud of her.