Coming soon: Rafe Blandford does Martin Brundle at Nokia World

Whilst at Nokia World in Stuttgart last week, Rafe Blandford from All About Symbian and I got together to produce a tour of the conference floor.

I always like to have a look around conference stalls to see what’s on offer. Often you’ll come across some real gems. It’s also worthwhile done together with colleagues so you can discuss and highlight interesting points to each other as you walk around.

Now and again I’ve bumped into Rafe at various mobile conferences and I’ve always been struck by his ability to rapidly identify smart and interesting things that he’s seen. And whenever we, here at Mobile Industry Review, have stuck a camera in his face, he’s delivered some brilliantly incisive commentary, albeit it briefly.

So. How much fun would it be to take a tour around a Nokia conference with Mr Nokia himself?

Just to put things in context, such is the size and breadth of Rafe’s knowledge, I’ve often witnessed Symbian and Nokia employees asking Rafe questions about products and services that they themselves didn’t know the answer to.

How would Rafe handle a glaring camera and big microphone for a 20-minute tour of Nokia World? Very well, I thought.

But it wasn’t until last night when I actually watched the raw footage and edited it into a flow that I recognised just how good the chap is.

To begin, we simply headed to the entrance. I turned on the camera. I handed Rafe the microphone and said, ‘So, we’ll just take a tour then?’ and, from scratch — without having visited any part of the ‘experience’ before, we jumped in. I did my best to keep up with him. Rafe did, in his own words, ‘a Martin Brundle‘ (the former British racing driver who regularly walks about the F1 pit lanes prior to the beginning of the races).

The results of the ‘Rafe Brundle’ tour are — I hope you’ll find — entertaining and informative. I particularly like the throwaway comments that he makes, along with the quick-fire analysis.

There’s a lot more of Rafe coming (most notably his hands-on with the N900). But meanwhile, you’ll be able to see the first part of the Nokia World tour this afternoon/evening on All About Symbian first.

We’ll republish here on MIR later on this evening. Standby!