Subtitles section Play video
-
Interviewer 15th of August 1996.
-
Aurelien Okay. The very first thing I see is this furry
-
banana which I bought on holiday with my family.
-
NARRATOR 20 year old aurelien is remembering a specific
-
day, when he was just four years old. he claims to have a power that scientists didn't believe
-
humans could possess.
-
Aurelien I've never met anyone who's been able
-
to do what I do.
-
NARRATOR put simply, aurelien is the first British
-
man to say that he doesn't forget his past.
-
Aurelien 'Cause I remember the 25th being the day
-
where it snowed in the morning, and I think it was the day that George Best died.
-
Dominic O'Brien 7th of July 2008.
-
Aurelien It's a Monday.
-
Aurelien It just seems like there's no gaps at all.
-
I can just see it all.
-
NARRATOR around the world, other people have come forward.
-
some claim to remember every day of their life.
-
Jill Price Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
-
Jill Price If you could stick a camera in my head then
-
I think everybody would freak out.
-
NARRATOR this summer, we met the people who say they
-
have this unbelievable ability. and the scientists putting them to the test.
-
Giuliana Mazzoni I always claimed that actually this was not
-
possible, because normal memory does not work like that.
-
NARRATOR could the amazing power they claim to have
-
possibly turn out to be real?
-
Dominic O'Brien I can tell within, you know, 30 seconds to
-
a minute if someone's genuine or not.
-
Dr McGaugh (Archive) November 13th 1980.
-
Jill Price (Archive) Was a Monday.
-
Dr McGaugh (Archive) How do you know it's a Monday?
-
Jill Price (Archive) 'Cause I just do.
-
Aurelien Sorry, I didn't wanna answer that question.
-
Can you stop filming? Sorry.
-
Interviewer Sure.
-
NARRATOR aurelien is a university student. we first
-
filmed with him on saturday the 19th may. sceptical about his unbelievable talent, and
-
curious to see how he could prove it.
-
Interviewer How could you demonstrate for me what it is
-
that your memory does that maybe mine doesn't?
-
Aurelien I suppose if someone said what happened, oh,
-
tell me something that happened in, like, June 2008. And I could instantly think of
-
things, whereas most people would not be even able to remember, you know, what they were
-
doing it that year.
-
Interviewer What about the 17th of June 2008?
-
Aurelien Yeah, I can tell you. That was a Tuesday,
-
and it was the first day after I finished my GCSE exams, and my room was an absolute
-
tip, so I had to just clear it all out, and I spent the whole day doing that. I could
-
tell you it was quite a nice day. It got sunnier and we went for a curry in the evening.
-
Aurelien And I remember watching Loose Women with my
-
mum, and Joan Rivers got thrown off for swearing on live TV. Yeah.
-
NARRATOR i checked the date of joan rivers' daytime
-
television outburst. he was right, it did occur on tuesday the 17th of june 2008.
-
NARRATOR aurelien said he couldn't tell me how he
-
did this. but he let me come back and test him on more random dates.
-
Interviewer 19th of September 2008?
-
Aurelien It was a Friday. I remember my dad was like
-
selling his car.
-
Aurelien It was the last that we saw his car before
-
it got taken.
-
Interviewer 30th of May 2007?
-
Aurelien It was a Wednesday. The weather was quite
-
good that day. Which was quite unusual because it rained pretty much for the whole of that
-
May.
-
Interviewer When you tell me all this stuff.
-
Aurelien Yeah.
-
Interviewer How am I supposed to know it's right? How
-
am I supposed to know that you remember this stuff? You claim it's true, but how do I
-
know?
-
Aurelien I suppose the thing is you don't, so. I
-
could be making it up right now.
-
Interviewer Are you making it up?
-
Aurelien No. I don't see why I would bother to be
-
honest with you.
-
Aurelien What do you think about it?
-
Interviewer I think it's a little unusual.
-
Aurelien Mmm.
-
Interviewer And I'm rather curious about how you're
-
doing it.
-
NARRATOR aurelien told me he remembered days way back
-
into his childhood. but he had absolutely no idea how they stuck in his head.
-
NARRATOR i wanted his parents to confirm the truth
-
of his memories, and see what they thought of their son's strange skill.
-
Aurelien's Mother We were talking sometimes at the table when
-
we were having a meal, and then I used to say, for instance, oh 'do you remember when
-
we went to Bangkok three years ago', or whatever. He used to say 'no, it was not
-
three years ago, it was four years ago, and it was actually on the blah blah blah',
-
you know, and he gave me the day, the month, and so forth. I used to say 'really?',
-
and then I used to run to look in my diary to see, you know, just to check, and I think
-
that's why I started to think gosh, you know, you memory is not bad.
-
Aurelien's Mother Do you remember what we did on the 30th of
-
Aurelien I know it was a Monday.
-
Aurelien's Mother Yeah.
-
Aurelien Bank holiday.
-
Aurelien's Mother How do you know that?
-
Aurelien I think it could be, I know that we went to the Cadbury factory
-
around that time.
-
Aurelien's Mother Yeah. Well, yeah, that's correct.
-
Aurelien So, I don't know for certain that it was
-
that day.
-
Aurelien's Mother Yeah it is that day.
-
Aurelien But I know that it was around that time.
-
Aurelien's Mother Yes, correct. That's exactly what we did,
-
we went to Cadbury World, we stopped in Ross-on-Wye on the day, and we had a great day eating
-
chocolate.
-
Aurelien's Father And over the years we've learnt to sort
-
of accept that if Aurelien does say that there's a date that's correct, after a couple of
-
years of saying 'oh no you got that wrong', and realising that he wasn't wrong, we tend
-
to accept it now without challenging it.
-
Interviewer What's your explanation for why Aurelien
-
can do that?
-
Aurelien's Mother 'Cause he's just like me, he's bright.
-
I don't know. Because, as I said to you before, it's not something I, you know,
-
I knew he had a good memory, but that was the extent of it really. I never knew he was,
-
you know, something really special and different from most people.
-
NARRATOR it seemed aurelien's memories were surprisingly
-
accurate. but it was hard to know how much of his life he'd got stored in his head.
-
Interviewer So, I'll pick a month at random.
-
Aurelien Okay.
-
Interviewer July 2009.
-
NARRATOR the month i chose was three years ago, 1,080
-
days have passed, since these events took place.
-
Aurelien I can remember 20 of the days. Like that.
-
I can remember all of those days. I suppose there are three things that pop out instantly
-
when I think of July. I went to France one weekend Tool in France, Duke of Edinburgh,
-
and driving lesson in fact. I can put that there. And I think around that time I started
-
reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
-
Aurelien Anyway, it's like I could get a diary for
-
2009 and write it if I wanted to. Retrospectively.
-
NARRATOR aurelien said that his brain stored all this
-
information automatically. but i wondered if he was hiding some secret technique. we
-
went to meet a man who has trained his memory. eight times world memory champion, dominic
-
o'brien.
-
Dominic O'Brien I would be suspicious if someone said that
-
they automatically know what they were doing on a specific day in their life. The day of
-
the week for any date, without involving some sort of technique.
-
Dominic O'Brien I can tell within, you know, 30 seconds to
-
a minute if someone's genuine or not, and most of the time they're not able to do
-
what they claim.
-
Dominic O'Brien Hello, you must be Aurelien.
-
Aurelien Yes, Dominic.
-
Dominic O'Brien Welcome.
-
Aurelien Nice to meet you.
-
Dominic O'Brien How are you?
-
Aurelien Good. You?
-
Dominic O'Brien Come inside we'll share some memories.
-
Aurelien Okay.
-
Dominic O'Brien Come in.
-
Aurelien Thank you.
-
Dominic O'Brien Go.
-
Aurelien Okay. Go.
-
NARRATOR aurelien says he has no technique to help
-
his extraordinary memory. dominic o'brien does, and he can memorise information at a
-
world record breaking speed.
-
Aurelien Okay.
-
Dominic O'Brien Two of hearts, four of diamonds, the jack
-
of hearts, the jack of clubs, seven of clubs, two of clubs.
-
Aurelien Completely right.
-
Dominic O'Brien Alright.
-
Aurelien I'd be interested to know what you do obviously.
-
I honestly, don't know where I'd begin.
-
Dominic O'Brien I mean, the jack of diamonds could be Johnny
-
Depp.
-
Aurelien Right.
-
Dominic O'Brien J D, jack of diamonds. The queen of clubs,
-
wherever that is, there we are, the queen of clubs that could be Paris Hilton, 'cause
-
she likes to go clubbing, she's the queen of nightclubs. So, now when I see the cards
-
I automatically see people.
-
NARRATOR mental images are the key to dominic's remarkable
-
memory, and he has a similar method to calculate dates.
-
Aurelien The 1st of June 2004.
-
Dominic O'Brien Tuesday I think. Is that right?
-
Aurelien Yeah.
-
Dominic O'Brien The 3rd of October 2003. Can you do that?
-
Aurelien 3rd of October. I think that was a Friday.
-
Dominic O'Brien Yes, it was, yeah.
-
Aurelien I remember my sister had a friend over.
-
Dominic O'Brien How about the 15th of April 2007?
-
Aurelien Ooh, that was a Sunday, and I went canoeing,
-
I was in Zambia; me, my dad and my sister went canoeing. Just remember that day straightaway.
-
Dominic O'Brien 10th of August.
-
Aurelien Yeah.
-
Dominic O'Brien 2007
-
Aurelien Okay.
-
Dominic O'Brien What's your nearest point of reference?
-
Aurelien My nearest point of reference is the 8th,
-
which was a Wednesday. Actually the 7th. I remember that night I'd eaten way too much,
-
and I threw up. So, for instance, I've known instantly what the 8th of August was.
-
Dominic O'Brien So, you're using a reference point.
-
Aurelien Yeah.
-
Aurelien The 8th was a Wednesday. Yeah.
-
Dominic O'Brien Yeah. That's right.
-
Aurelien So then I think Friday must have been the
-
10th.
-
Dominic O'Brien You're not making a point of I must remember
-
this day because it's two days before my birthday and I'll remember for the future.
-
So you don't review this? That is fascinating. It is interesting. Don't think I've ever
-
met somebody quite like you. 'Cause that's extraordinary, because for me to do that,
-
I mean, I could do what you do, if I made a conscious effort to do it.
-
Aurelien Yeah.
-
Dominic O'Brien But I would have to review every day at the
-
end of the day, and then think about it the following day, next week, next month, etc.
-
Until I've got it.
-
Aurelien I think of it as, it's almost like there's
-
this imaginary pen writing in events in a sort of mental calendar.
-
Interviewer So, you're convinced are you?
-
Dominic O'Brien I'm 99% sure Aurelien is the genuine article.
-
Dominic O'Brien 99%.
-
Aurelien I don't think that people would meet me
-
and think like he's got something funny about his memory.
-
Friend Yeah, but we had no idea, like, at all. As
-
soon as you suddenly said 'oh, I've got this thing', I was like 'what? Really?'
-
NARRATOR it seemed aurelien had only just started to
-
let others see his hidden talent.
-
Aurelien I'd love to know what you think. I don't
-
know.
-
Friend I think it's weird that I can say a date
-
and you would know what day it was.
-
Aurelien Yeah.
-
Friend Rel do you remember when you lost your virginity?
-
Friend What day was that?
-
Aurelien There are some things which are.
-
Friend Well, do you? If you say you remember.
-
Friend No, I do. It was the 19th of January 2006.
-
Aurelien So, you lost it on a Thursday?
-
Friend What?
-
Aurelien Is it really cool or really weird?
-
Friend Strange.
-
Friend weird.
-
Friend Both
-
NARRATOR i wasn't the only person trying to make
-
sense of aurelien's extraordinary ability.
-
Henry Yeah, masses of memory, here it is. People
-
who can recall exactly what happened on every day of their lives.
-
NARRATOR his boyfriend, henry, had come across a story
-
of people with a suspiciously similar skill.
-
Henry So like do you struggle to remember what you
-
had for breakfast yesterday, let alone what you did last weekend? Yeah, so this is basically
-
what I read.
-
Aurelien And then you watched the documentary.
-
NARRATOR jill price was the first person in the world
-
to come forward with this ability. she's been living with it for almost four decades.
-
Jill Price (Archive) I actually believe I should be like in a mental
-
hospital, because this is, makes me crazy. Like, I still feel bad about stuff that happened
-
30 years ago.
-
Diane Sawyer (Archive) But we all do, I mean, we can all remember
-
one or two things.
-
Jill Price (Archive) It's not one or two things, everything.
-
Aurelien I mean, hers is very extreme. She can remember