The Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta forgot Boris Johnson’s name, during his joint press conference with Prime Minister’s Theresa May.
Kenya’s leader was answering a question about the special and historic relation with UK when he mentioned the former foreign Secretary Boris Johnson who visited Kenya lasts year. The President wanted to say how Britain gave his country a fleet of ambulances, but the only remembered Boris and forgot Johnson. Mr Kenyatta then remembered the full by recalling the bicycle image in his mind. He was saying “… when last year your former foreign secretary…Boris….Boris… ah… Boris Johnson…. the bicycle guy. ” ..
It was the highlight moment for the hacks and hackettes , during a presser marked by long winded questions from local hacks… one question lasted a full three minutes.
It seems that Kenyan leader must have had the training usually given to intelligence agents and spying of remembering names, places, events and other information by visualising a certain image or a strong impact event associated with the name or the information. Hence linking the image of the bicycle with Boris Johnson in Mr Kenyatta’s mind, or the memory storage in his mind enabled him to recall the full name.
Let us hope .. in two years time .. or less.. President Kenyatta would still remember the full name of of our current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt without the need to recall the famous Today Programme interview with James Naughty ?