May I borrow you for a second? ... Leo McKern and Dennis Price in A Jolly Bad Fellow. Photograph: Kobal
Love the idea of libraries, but kinda bored with books? We have just the thing. Not CDs, not DVDs or videogames; a library of people.
The idea is that "readers" can look up a number of social stereotypes, and then "withdraw" one of the people to whom these labels attach for half an hour or so. You won't be entirely surprised to learn that the idea was born in Scandinavia, but it's been catching on across Europe.
A feature in today's Times relates the experience of David Baker - shelved as "Gay Man" - who made himself available to be borrowed in a north London library.
Apparently, the experience is a very mind-broadening one. Baker relates a sparky encounter with two young black men, which left all three of them feeling much enlightened.
It sounds like quite a good idea - but it does leave one question hanging in the air: don't books broaden minds and horizons by themselves? There's space to store rather more of them in the average library, also, and you can get them to repeat themselves over and over again and they still won't hit you.
