Hawkeye offers insight

(CNS): Actor, director, TV host and writer Alan Alda went down a storm last night as he made his debut appearance in front of a crowd of Cayman fans. Speaking about his life, near death experience and the strangeness of fame, literally hundreds of people packed into the cinema at Camana Bay to hear him talk about his latest book.

Hosted by Books and Books at the Hollywood Theatre Cinema, the award winning former MASH star who played Hawkeye Pierce for some eleven years spoke about the rigours of his profession, the dangers of celebrity and how he almost died at the top of a mountain in Chile. Promoting his most recent memoir Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, and reflecting on his previous memoir, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, Alda regaled the audience with candid and hilarious snippets from his life and explained from where the title for his new book hailed.

“When you give advice we’re all really just talking to ourselves,” he said. “It’s about trying to figure out what we would actually do in those circumstances.” He explained that during his life he’d had to give advice at what he considered inappropriate places as once he became a celebrity he was asked to speak at various events that he said he had no business being at.

Reflecting on what he said to doctors, psychiatrists, physicists and even Thomas Jefferson experts, he said he had been searching for some meaning to his life ever since he ran into some serious intestinal trouble while visiting astronomers for his science programme at the top of a mountain.

After walking among the audience and answering a few questions, Alda then patiently sat and signed literally hundreds of copies of his book that Cayman fans had bought as they queued all the way around Camana Bay.

Alda’s appearance was part of the visiting authors series and Candace Bushnell, the famous creator of Sex in the City, will be then next writer to make a guest appearance on Saturday 4 October. Tickets are available with the purchase of her latest book One Fifth Avenue. Local authors Fred Burton and Dick& Felix Francis will also be appearing at Books and Books on 1 and 5 October respectively.