HUMAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 123, 31 October 1941, Page 44

HUMAN ENCYCLOPAEDIA

Christchurch Woman Who Knows The Answer To Almost Anything

RS. Elsie Clarke, Station 3ZB’s champion Information Please contestant is a disconcerting conversationalist. She is quite likely to interrupt the most harmless discussion about the weather with an observation "But that was nothing to the flood Wellington had in 1874. Twenty-seven point five six inches of rain fell in 86 hours." Or she may counter an observation on the progress of the war with a recital, complete to the last date and place-name, of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia. Not that Mrs. Clarke parades her .uncanny general knowledge without good reason. Sometimes, she confesses, she wishes she were quite normal in that respect. For Mrs. Clarke doesn’t claim any credit for her ability; the simple explanation of it, she says, is that she has a photographic memory. She _ reads widely, and once she has grasped a fact, it sticks. The Attic is Full *Tt ‘isn’t all fun, I can tell you," she says. "My brain is cluttered up with useless rubbish like a spare room in an attic. And I can’t get rid of it." A Christchurch girl, Mrs. Clarke was educated at St. Michael’s School, the Christchurch Girls’ High School, and

Canterbury University College, and she also spent some time at the Canterbury School of Art. But notwithstanding her remarkable memory, she didn’t make a fetish of examinations, and after nine years as an accountant in a solicitor’s office, she settled down and married and had a small son just like thousands of other young women. She has always been an avid reader, Even as a tiny tot, she says, she read anything she could find, from mythology to horror stories. She still reads a lot, with a preference for sagas of family life and light current history. She seldom reads detective novels. Offers to Retire Mrs, Clarke first broke into radio about two years ago when she entered for Station 3ZB’s "Spelling Bees," They couldn’t stump her, and after several sessions, she retired without having. made a single mistake over the air. Then she entered for the old "Professor Speedee’" general information session, and again she was undefeated. On April 10 of this year, she entered for 3ZB’s Information Please, and she has been collecting prizes of National Savings certificates ever since. Several times she has offered to retire, as she thought some listeners would be a little incredulous if she kept on winning at such a rate. Recently, the sponsors of the session sent her on tour to 1ZB and 2ZB. At 1ZB she was first equal with a gentle-

man who called himself "Whispering Smith," and at 2ZB she appeared both in an Information Please session in the studio, and at a special display of her general knowledge in a big Wellington department store. Mrs. Clarke is still annoyed about that first equal at Auckland. "I would have come first, but for a foolish question sent in from Christchurch, of all places," she says. "They wanted to know what is the maximum amount the New Zealand Government is prepared to reimburse individual farmers if they change over from butter to cheese production at the request of the Government. Well, I don’t profess to be a dairy-farmer. So I said, ‘I -haven’t the faintest idea, and wait until I get back to Christchurch. I'd like to meet the person who sent in that question!’ "