There’s a quite interesting piece on the Guardian today for people of a certain age who get a wig-wam when anything remotely nostalgic is written about. Or on the telly, like that revisionist series The 1970s, and how it invented everything. The first one was diverting, thought the delivery is a little patronising and it’s barely scratched the surface thus far in its desire the prove its hypothesis right.
So anyway, the most interesting fact in that article is that Caroline Hersee had more screen time than anyone else in British TV history, around 70,000 hours in all. And I must have watched almost half of those hours transfixed. That test card still freaks me out a little bit, because when I was little I thought it was me. I did. I couldn’t understand why I was dressed as a girl playing noughts and crosses with a scary fucking clown. I had good reason to think it was me – I looked exactly like that girl – apart from the Alice band and long hair. It seems even at that age I was wildly delusional and believed everyone was starting at me.
YOU ARE FUNNY ALLEN!!
I am, it’s true!
I think you beloved it was you because I told you this and, being the gullible three year old you were at the time, you sealed the thought and turned it into your own.