riaan cruywagen: teaching butterflies to fly in formation

i have noticed, via analytics, that almost 50% of the hits to my site come from google. of those hits a large portion can be attributed to riaan cruywagen, and more accurately probably to the post i made about the parody on chuck norris jokes in favour of our famous news reader. (on doing a search on google for riaan cruywagen i was rather amazed, and pleased to see that my post comes out first on google's results!)

i remember watching riaan delivering the news when i was just a wee little person. i also have recollections of watching him more recently and being amused by his choice of hair colour and obvious hair piece... riaan is definitely a prominent part of most south african's lives post 1975, which is when he started broadcasting during the test signals. as an aside, i have been told by acquaintances who had newly installed tv's at that time, that they would all gather around the tv with drinks and snacks to watch the test signals... tv was such a new, big thing back then. :)

but how much do we really know about riaan? seriously. a search on wikipedia provides a little insight, but not much at that. then there's the interview in january 2002, published by the sunday times. perhaps we can learn a little more about the legend from his own words... i do recommend reading it, he apears rather candid in the interview... my favourite q & a is posted below... upon reading it, one can imagine how he could be construed as the "chuck norris" of south africa... teaching butterflies to fly in formation indeed...

Are you often asked to speak publicly?

Yes. Although I have enormous butterflies in my stomach before I address an audience, once I'm talking they disappear. Perhaps I have learned to teach them to fly in formation.