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CNN Live Today

Britain Celebrates the Left-Handed

Aired August 13, 2001 - 13:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: If you're left-handed, you know it's not always easy adapting to a right-handed world. And we're tired of it, Kyra.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: I know. You've been telling me about it.

Well, Britain today is observing its annual Left-Handers Day, a day dedicated to promoting everything except the right.

CNN's Margaret Lowrie reports from London.

ALLEN: I like this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love being a lefty.

MARGARET LOWRIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The one time of year when being a lefty is not a political statement, rather a biological manifestation: Left-Handers Day in London's Leicester Square, where sinistrality is celebrated.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Both of my parents are lefties. I don't know. I just always -- like, whenever I watch TV or anything, I always notice who's a lefty. So I love that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's the first question she asks any guy when she meets him.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's true. I do.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is he left-handed or right-handed?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a flaw if they're not.

LOWRIE (on camera): Anything you want people who aren't left- handed to know about what it's like about being left-handed?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's trickier than you think.

LOWRIE (voice-over): Twelve-year-old Thom (ph) Milsom comes from a lefty dynasty. His parents own a left-handed gadget store in London and helped set up this celebration of the southpaw.

LAUREN MILSOM, LEFTHANDERS CLUB: Some of the greatest artists were left-handed: Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso, Holbein -- all left-handers. And some of the world's -- Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar.

LOWRIE: Like Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix, Thom Costall is also left-handed. He doesn't yet share their fame, but already knows well the problems they've faced with right-handed guitars.

THOM COSTALL, LEFT-HANDED MUSICIAN: The choices that you get are much more limited. And it's sort of like when I bought this one, I had the choice of this or nothing.

LOWRIE: These right-handed sisters have left-handed parents.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's OK. It's only scissors really that were problems.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If we sat next to each other in a restaurant, and our elbows...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, yes, the elbows. That's the big problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The elbows.

LOWRIE: Observe: A left-handed man brought up using right- handed scissors finds it even more difficult using left-handed scissors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because these are the other way around, you've got to relearn. Only if I could use them right-handed.

LOWRIE: Perhaps more easily than a right-handed person could. Recent reports cite American research linking left-handedness to greater intelligence and creativity.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Law of averages. There's fewer of us, so if more of us are geniuses, it's got to be something to do with the left-handed and the lateral thinking.

LOWRIE: But who needs research when you've got the T-shirt? It says that "because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, only left-handers are in their right mind."

Margaret Lowrie, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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