Well, not exactly, but I did receive a phone call from a nice lady at the BBC who had read my post on thanatophobia.

For those of you who haven’t read that, and can’t be bothered to read it, here’s a one-paragraph recap:

I suffer from thanatophobia. That’s the fear of death. It’s not a fear of dying, it’s a fear of being dead, and there not being a ‘me’ any more. It’s not so much ‘how would you like to be remembered’, it’s that I’d rather still be here, thanks. And it’s the bloody inevitability of it that’s depressing. I mean, you can live longer, but in the end you’ll still be dead and (assuming there’s no afterlife) that’s it. No you any more. And I don’t like that idea at all. And as the original post has had over 200 comments on it now, it would appear that I’m far from being the only person who feels that way.

So anyway, the Richard Bacon show on Radio 5 Live are apparently having a discussion/ talk about death from between 11:59pm on Wednesday 30th July and 1:00am on Thursday 31st, and this lady was asking me if I’d be willing to be on the radio to talk about it.

Now my previous radio experience wasn’t exactly a wonderful success, but that hasn’t put me off, because for one thing it helped me make a friend: the other member of the Mike Parr Survivors Club. And besides which, it’s all really tied in with phase #1 of my plans for world domination. Or something.

Apparently Richard Bacon is on holiday and Rachel Burden is standing in for him (it does beg the question: is it mandatory for the stand-in to have the same initials as the person they are replacing?), and I know that there will also be apparently a funeral director and a comedian (who, I am presuming, makes jokes about death, rather than just being some random comedian to keep the comedy quotient at satisfactory levels) appearing, so I’m quite looking forward to it.

Hopefully some of the listeners will be like some of the commenters on my blog: people who used to think it was only them, until someone else stood up and spoke about it. Knowing you’re not the only one does help, because you know other people understand what you’re feeling. And if anyone listening to that show falls into that category, then I feel I will have achieved something worthwhile. And, you never know, I might get a chance to plug the blog

Besides, if it’s tough for me and the other guests, then I could always set up the Rachel Burden survivors’ club, anyway….