Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns, now picture you, zooming past

it all, light and breezy, ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic.

Take your train journey via AvantiWestcoast.co.uk, AvantiWestcoast, feel good travel.

What you're about to hear is a telephone call, crackling through the mists of time, from

all the way back in 1972.

Did you get me, ah, Mr. Crosby noise, please, of the washing star?

Yes, sir.

Hello?

Mr. Crosby noise?

Oh, Mr. President.

Oh, yeah.

Fine, thank you, sir.

I don't have anything of shaking importance enough for your column, but I thought you'd be

interested in that.

When President Richard Nixon made this phone call to a journalist for the Washington

Star, he was on the first ever visit by an American president to the People's Republic

of China.

It was a trip of earth shaking importance, which shaped foreign policy and geopolitics

for decades to come.

And President Nixon knew just how to sell it to the American people.

To help usher in this new era of diplomacy, he relied on a pair of giant pandas.

That's the acquisition of the star that Mr. Nixon and I decided that the pandas should

...