Bad advice

I don't know if you remember this from a few weeks ago.

It's an odd and intriguing claim for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the "British Olympic Chess Squad" is a non-existent entity - let's assume he means the Olympiad and that the squad he refers to is the English one - and another of which is that I haven't the faintest idea when he might have been any sort of advisor to such a squad.

Buzan obviously thinks he was, though, since he keeps on making the claim: you can find it in any number of other Buzan-related sources. Here, for instance, is Buzan Asia.

That one is members of the British Olympic Chess Team rather than the British Olympic Chess Squad, but let's assume that it's the same thing under a different, equally inaccurate name. What's the basis in reality of that claim?

I sent them an email to ask. (I kept it simple, which is why there's no querying of "British" or "Olympic" in the emails below.)

Dear Buzan Asia

I was reading your site this morning and I saw the following:

Tony Buzan is an adviser to the British Olympic Rowing Squad as well as to the members of the British Olympic Chess Team.

I am British, I play chess and I had never heard that Mr Buzan was an advisor to our chess team. Would it be possible to ask Mr Buzan when this was and whether it was an official post?

Yours

I didn't get a reply to this email, but no matter, since one virtue of the claim appearing all over the Buzan empire is that there is always somebody else you can ask.

Like Aulis Publishing for instance, whose site mentions the British Olympic Chess Team, rather than the "members" thereof.

So I also wrote to them.

Dear Aulis

I was reading your site this morning and I saw the following:

Tony is also an advisor to international Olympic coaches and athletes and to the British Olympic Rowing Squad as well as the British Olympic Chess Team.

I am British, I play chess and I had never heard that Mr Buzan was an advisor to our chess team. Would it be possible to ask Mr Buzan when this was and whether it was an official post?

Yours

And stone me if I didn't get a reply to this one.

Dear Justin,

Thank you for your enquiry.

We will ask Tony Buzan for more information about this post.

Kind regards,

David

Aulis Publishers, London

The horse's mouth! Regrettably though it has been two weeks and more, and the horse is yet to speak. Still, nil desperandum, there are other paths still open. Like perhaps the Buzan Centre in Australia:

The British Olympic chess squads, this time. I amended my email accordingly.

Dear Buzan Centre

I was reading your site this morning and I saw the following:

Tony is also an advisor to the international Olympic coaches and athletes and to the British Olympic Rowing squad, as well as the British Olympic chess squads.

I am British, I play chess and I had never heard that Mr Buzan was an advisor to our chess squads. Would it be possible to ask Mr Buzan when this was and whether it was an official post?

Yours

And again, I got a reply. It didn't refer my question to Tony Buzan this time. It referred the question to somebody else.

Can you guess who?

I do hope you'll take a "quick peak" at Jennifer's chapter before moving on to the question of what happened to the email which she forwarded to the address below.

The answer is, so far, nothing. Not a whisper. Not a sausage. Not a word.

This is curious, since the email address belongs to Tony Buzan's biographer, who must surely know the answer if anybody does.

Not that I have read the biography, though I'm given to understand it is no help in locating the answer to our question. But nevertheless its author is surely the man for the job.

So come on Ray, what about it? What role did Tony Buzan have giving what advice to which members of which Olympic squad or team?

I think we should be told.

[Ray Keene index]