I wasn't going to start a thread for this, but I have an urge to.

What a legend he is, just look at him:



I bought the book based on his latest TV series of the same name, Dan Cruickshank's Adventures in Architecture (tonight, 9pm, BBC2) for half-price on Saturday as it had a damaged back cover. Brilliant.

He can get a bit carried away at times and come out with some typical architecture-style crap, but most of the time his enthusiasm just pours out of the TV screen and it makes for very good viewing in my opinion.

Its a good programme and Mr Cruickshank is a first class presenter.

His enthusiastic style lights up some quite dull material at times.

I found it rather amusing last week when he spent hours and hours travelling across deepest, darkest Afghanistan, with dozens of security people, trucks and so on, only to visit what to me looked like an old chimney stuck out in the middle of nowhere. But by the time he'd enthusiastically shown us this "chimney" (which was actually a minaret at the Musalla complex in Herat according to my book), I actually ended up finding the building quite interesting.

I had to do a presentation the other week at uni, and thought I'd throw in the odd Dan Cruickshank technique of saying something, pausing, doing that strange thing he does with his hands, and then continuing to speak. It worked a treat as I was told I was "very passionate" about what I was speaking about. Truth be known, whilst I was fairly interested in what I was talking about, I wanted to finish as quickly as possible and get home. Thank you, Mr. Cruickshank.