Saturday was a surreal day. First thing in the morning, I was wired up by a fly-on-the-wall documentary team before greeting the press and swallowing an entire bottle of (homeopathic) arsenic. At lunch, still alive but barely awake, I was giving phone interviews to the Press Association and a Russian magazine, then I spent a frantic evening on the phone to a producer at BBC News 24 arranging to get a either Simon Singh or Evan Harris MP to the studio. This blogging nonsense really has changed my life.
Amidst all the chaos, I probably blanked half the people I know, for which I'm sorry, and I'll be more friendly next time! You can see a small sample of all the great media coverage we generated on the website. I was the campaign PR person, but although I'm feeling fairly smug today I can't take that much credit... it just sort of snowballed, and it was very much driven by local media at each of the hubs involved.
Most of the credit is due to the actual organizers. Here in London, Carmen and Tessa (both guest bloggers here) did an absolutely brilliant job arranging the event in often difficult circumstances. Jack of Kent gave legal advice and kept an eagle eye out for the police. Andy Wilson, Michael Marshall, Mike Hall, Dr *T and the rest at Merseyside Skeptics deserve credit for coming up with the idea and motivating an entire nation's worth of skeptics to take part. Alex Pryce, Keir Liddle and the rest of the guys in Edinburgh did a spectacular job, as did Crispian Jago down in Hampshire and all the other groups. Events took place across the English-speaking world in Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, even BBC Brazil were asking me for photos.
And special thanks to Chris French, Simon Singh, Evan Harris, and Dave Gorman, who came along to add heavyweight support.
I'll be talking about homeopathy and 10:23 at the next London Skeptics in the Pub, on February 15th in the Penderel Oak in Holborn with hopefully one or two special guests.
There's also more to come from me, and from 10:23. After my last article generated more than 500 comments, The Guardian have asked for a follow up, coming out this Wednesday. The Select Committee report is due out in just over a week's time, and is likely to be highly critical of homeopathy. And there are moves afoot to expand on 10:23, to take the campaign in new directions.
But anyway, enough wittering from me for now. Here are some pictures, taken by our brilliant photographer Kelly Haddow (if you'd like her to photograph your event, do e-mail me and I'll pass you along).
Videos!
Videos from London will be available soon, but meanwhile here are some from around the UK and further afield.
Southampton:
Edinburgh:
Oxford:
Liverpool:
Perth, Australia:
Leeds:
Sydney:
You can see all the latest media as they come in on the 10:23 website, right here.
As Ben Goldacre once said: We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine.
http://layscience.net/trackback/927
Alex Pryce deserves a mention and credit for the Edinburgh event more then I do - although I did get RSI making homeopathic whisky (Famous frouse 10C) without his enthusiasm I doubt it would have gone half as well.
Stuart and Ned deserve mentions to for getting the Edinburgh student humanist society involved and Charmaine and Claudio for doing our documentary filming (apart from my iPhone tomfoolery). Alison deserves plaudits for donating cash for leaflets.
Also Alex Buque deserves kudos for very often being the voice of reason and common sense and for being one of us wot debased our skeptical selves buying homeopathic remedies (I still feel a little dirty!)
Also although he missed the overdose lots of thanks to Robin Ince for popping down and chatting to us and doing an impromptu bit on stage for us (which I missed due to making homeopathic whisky... Gah)
Oh and we had a PPC for the Green Party Edinburgh North and Leith taking part - Kate Joester. Doing her bit to inprove the green parties image of being dodgy on science.
your mad, i happen to be a teen witch and you are just sceared, not angry, SCEARED!
As fun as the campaign was - surely, the only way to overdose with homeopathy (let's pretend that it works for the sake of argument) is to take a 'pillule' and scrape off an infinitesimally small amount and take that, rather than necking a load of them.
Why did Jack of Kent need to keep "and eagle eye out for the police"? Were you acting illegally?
I'm genuinely puzzled.
For god's sake man, add some anti-spam features to the comment area of your blog. Yikes !
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Homeopathic Whisky? So... that should produce sharpened senses, increase inhibition and give massive symptoms of anxiety, I guess? They should probably make it compulsory daily medication for soldiers!