B4

David Thomas failed all his exams and left school with no qualifications, yet this 30-year-old fire-fighter has gone into the Guinness Book of Records by reciting from memory 22,500 digits of the mathematical constant, pi.

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B5

After having trained for five months, in which he spent ten hours a day memorizing a quarter of million digits, David Thomas took part in a 16-hour mental battle. Witnesses watched in awe as Thomas set a new European Record, earning the title 'most Powerful Memory in the Western Hemisphere'.

 TRAIN

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David says, 'My education was very limited.  My father left home when I was six years old, and my mother and stepfather didn't open my eyes much. When I was at school I was hopeless. I couldn't remember anything, but now I can remember more facts than anyone in Europe.

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B7

If there was a memory Olympics, I would have a good chance of a gold medal'. So how Thomas do it?

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B8

One night he was watching a TV programme and there was an interview with a man called Dominic O'Brien,

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who had been the world memory champion five times. Thomas was fascinated by O'Brien's theory that anyone can improve their memory by using specialized techniques. These techniques involve linking everything to familiar people or objects. If David is trying to remember facts he also links them to an image.

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B10

You might wonder what the points is of being able to remember 22,500 numbers. But David is soon going to appear on TV's Record Breakers, and this week he is teaching memory training.

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