While I was getting all nervous about having to interview Tim Maughan live on air, Amanda Palmer was tweeting frenetically about her forthcoming appearance at TED. Scary as Tim can be, I suspect she had the harder job. But, as usual, she carried it off brilliantly. The talk is all about the Art of Asking, that is, how to finance a career in art by asking people to pay for it. It is well worth a listen.

I guess it helps a lot to have Amanda’s amazing personality to carry this sort of thing off. It also helps not to be British, and therefore not to have been brought up believing that it is horribly wrong to promote yourself in any way.

From my point of view, the other problem with following Amanda’s advice is that, if you have grown up expecting to be discriminated against, learning to trust other people is hard. It is something I keep having to work on.