After leaving the Communist Party in 1961, I joined the Tufty Club – I felt Stalin was no longer in a position to help me cross Balham High Road safely.
I was four and my membership provided me with a badge and a Tufty Club handkerchief – this also acted as a tourniquet in case you didn’t properly observe your Kerb Drill.
Imagine my horror when, in 1975, a TV advert saw Tufty replaced by a six-foot-seven body builder called the Green Cross Man. How could this be real and taken seriously? Surely no one was that tall – not even Tufty’s road-crossing weasel buddy. The giant’s premise was ‘stop, look, listen, think’ – you can now add ‘hope (‘it’s not a Prius’)’ onto the end of that.
Because I lived next to my primary school, I never needed the use of a lollypop man or woman. I did see them at a distance, though, and assumed that a). you had to be over 100; b). hated kids and c). probably have been very proficient with a Kendo fighting stick in a previous occupation. They would stop speeding traffic on the A24 with one step into the road with their ‘lollypop’ as if being on the set of ‘Enter the Dragon’ – this was in itself quite dangerous, and we often nearly witnessed ‘Enter the Cortina’ – lollypop first.
Tufty Fluffytail was first created in 1953, he will now be 67 and is probably now a grumpy old lollypop squirrel somewhere or living in your loft. Wherever he is, he’ll be moaning the music’s too loud.
Mind the roads.