“All relationships are transient, friends who stab you in the back. People you network with at a fancy party. Relatives who die. The love of your life. Everything is temporary. People come into your life for a limited amount of time, and then they go away. So you welcome their arrival, and you surrender to their departure. Because they are all visitors. And when the visitors go home, they might take something from you. Something that you can’t ever get back. And that part sucks. But visitors always leave souvenirs. And you get to keep those forever.”
I didn’t write that first paragraph. I found it on the world-wide web after a surfing session. I was actually looking for something else but when I found that paragraph I had to stop and think. The writer, a guy called Sam Lansky, called it the Theory of Visitors and his post (you can read the full post here) is actually a post about gay men, dating and relationships but it highlights a fundamental fact of life: Life is temporary and everything changes. That can be a bad thing if you are happy with your lot and don’t want things to change, but then again if you are not happy with things then hang on, because someday it will all change.
Anyway, I might as well try to get back on track. I was diverted by the Theory of Visitors and good writing always has the power to take me way off track. I was writing about me and social media, and one way to try and gauge how I am doing and how visible I am in cyber space is by searching for me on the internet. I don’t know if that’s something you have done yourself but looking for you yourself on the internet is always fun. The first things that pops up on Google about me, Steve Higgins, are plenty of hits for various other Steve Higgins’s and the most popular Steve Higgins on the internet is a guy I have never heard of, the Steve Higgins who apparently is an American comedian and talk show host. That particular Steve Higgins was born on 13th August 1963 and is also a writer, producer, announcer, actor, and comedian. He currently serves as the announcer of The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon and as a writer and producer of Saturday Night Live, a TV show over there in the USA.
On page 2 this very website appears in the results, Steve Higgins: Letters from an unknown author. Page 3 shows my amazon author page which is good but nothing much else could be found about me personally although it was interesting to hear that Steve Higgins was performing at the annual Caribbean Voices and Pan Show, giving a ‘spectacular’ musical performance. I was also happy to see that the Steve Higgins who appeared in the obituaries was not me and at the moment I am currently alive and well.
Clicking on the Google video tab I found myself on page three of the results one day and relegated to page 6 on the next. Disappointing but at least it’s good to know that I actually feature in Google which is probably more by accident than design although I do pay a lot of attention to SEO otherwise known as Search Engine Optimisation. What is that all about?
Well it’s about making sure that you are using the right keywords in the right places so that you will show up on Google searches and one big tip I would like to reveal is this one. Instead of adding an image titled DSC34567 to your post, give it another title, rename it to something more relevant to your post as Google searches will also pick up on the names of your images!
Anyway, getting back to me. On a very dull night shift not long ago I was sitting with my colleague Paul and we were watching the old TV show Bullseye. As usual in our control room the TV has no sound, just subtitles and Paul mentioned how great it would be for a contestant on the show to tune in and see either himself or a loved one guesting on TV from the 1980’s. The show started in 1981 and ran for quite a while.
As I thought about it I remembered that I myself was on a TV show in the late 80’s or early 90’s. It was a show called A Word in Your Era. It was a spoof quiz show, that is to say it wasn’t a real quiz show at all. It pretended to be but all the questions and dialogue were scripted in advance and the guests were comedians who were playing a part. In fact I remember that the warm up man was the writer of the show and he seemed to be very pleased with himself, poor deluded fellow that he was.
On the show that I was part of, Steve Cougan played Casanova and he answered various questions, in character, all of which were pre arranged for Steve to give a comedic reply to. When we entered the TV studio, the old BBC studios in Oxford Road in Manchester, members of the audience were asked to give questions to the performers in a fake question and answer session. The question I was given was to ask ‘Casanova’ was had he ever been involved with a man?
Now A Word in Your Era never really took off and although I remember my episode being on TV the series fizzled out soon after. Anyway, I didn’t imagine for a moment that the show would be out there on the Internet but then again, one should not under estimate the power of Google or the Internet. There am I, just as I was in 1992 with large glasses and a not very attractive shirt . .
The video should start just as I make an appearance but if not, fast forward to 17 minutes 54 seconds!
After that experience I became quite interested in being on TV and applied to be a contestant on another TV quiz show. At the audition I was understandably rather nervous. Sitting with various other TV hopefuls I was asked to stand up and talk about myself. I did so, chatted about my job, my new house move and so on. After a few minutes I faltered and asked ‘was that enough?’ Fine, said the producer or whoever she was. As I returned to my seat, a girl sat next to me shook her head. ‘Oh God’ I asked. ‘Was I that bad?’
‘No’ she answered. ‘It’s just that you have to keep talking until asked to stop. If you stop too early they expect you’ll dry up on the real TV show and so they won’t go for you.’ The lady, like quite a few of my neighbours in the audition room, was a veteran of various daytime TV shows and knew what she was talking about. I never made it onto the long forgotten TV quiz show.
Going back to Google I thought I’d might as well try the Google image tab. I scrolled down and there I am on row 22 of the image results, nestled between Steve Higgins with Cuba Gooding Junior and Steve Higgins @stevehigginsok of Twitter. Steve sadly has only 478 Twitter followers compared to my 6,743! Never mind Steve, perhaps you need to do a little more networking.
Looking back over http://www.stevehigginslive.com (not http://www.stevehiggins.com -that wily US comedian has snapped up that domain name!) I see that I have revealed a great deal of myself to the unsuspecting public, all in the name of marketing my one and only book.
My hobbies of writing and video production have been revealed. My love of 1960s TV shows. My classic film addiction, my music loves. Have I revealed my true self, the inner Steve Higgins that is really me? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Either way, everything is only temporary. People come into your life for a limited amount of time, and then they go away. So you welcome their arrival, and you surrender to their departure. . . .
The picture isn’t a bad one. Ok I’m not as young as I used to be but I look reasonably well, I suppose, although I’m clearly not the cool dude in that graphic at the top of the page!
Letters from an unknown author! 