Category: Comedy

As an only child I would often have to amuse myself with whatever toy raw materials I had around me.  I was obsessed, as a ten-year-old, with golf and would spend hours at night in the bedroom of my Balham flat putting a golf ball into a lone empty yogurt pot (pointless having two yoghurt pots as I had no one to call).

One year I was given the Arnold Palmer Pro Shot Golf game and, as golf courses tend to close during the hours of darkness, at night I’d set this up;  utilising the six available clubs, two bunkers and four out-of-bounds fences, I’d try and complete eighteen holes.

My golfing ability, due to playing too much Pro Shot Golf, never improved, so I’d never win the Morden Pitch ‘n’ Putt Open let alone the US one.

I never completed eighteen holes as invariably I’d get my finger stuck in the levering device which enabled mini-Arnold Palmer to swing.  I would then walk the walk of shame into my parents’ lounge, implement still attached to my finger, and ask for some butter to remove it.  As I walked back to my bedroom, I’d hear them talk:

“All he does at night is play with himself.”

“He’ll probably go blind.”

As I walked back, I thought: ‘I’ve got my finger stuck, it’s not taken my bloody eye out!’

In my final year at my Balham primary school, apart from the playtime bell ringing, the favourite part of my time there was when the teacher announced: ‘It’s time to work on your topic’.

A ‘topic’ was a project which lasted several terms and had nothing to do with hazelnut-covered chocolate.

In 1967 there were thirty of us in the class (I was one of the few not called ‘Susan’) and our topic was to write about a county.  There had been thirty-six English counties, so the chances of getting Rutland (and consequently no work) was high.

I got Middlesex.  I wanted Kent as I was, even as a ten-year-old, a massive fan of the County Cricket Club and obsessive about cricket generally – which became horribly obvious as my topic progressed.

Two years earlier Middlesex had officially stopped being a county.  Surely better than getting Rutland?  No, new county boundaries meant for nothing in SW17 (not part of Westmoreland).

I could have written about Harrow School; Chiswick House or the 15^th Century font in West Drayton; I chose solely to write about Middlesex cricket.

My topic could have included facts about Hampton Court and its inhabitants and history; I chose to write about the inhabitants of Lord’s (not even in Middlesex).

Leading up to my Eleven-plus, rather than plumping for Thomas Cromwell, I wrote (at length) about Fred Titmus.  I even referred to the English Test cricketer probably being a better offspinner than Katherine of Aragon.  

So, not so much divorced; beheaded; died; divorced; beheaded; survived, more stumped; run out; caught; stumped; run out; hit the ball twice.

And now there is avocado milk to go with the trillions of other dairy products you can get.
Growing up in the sixties we had three types: red, silver and, if you’d come into a few bob, gold-top; avocado was the colour of your bathroom.
Can you imagine the chaos in the sixties at school milk time with thirty different alternatives? Hancock advocated, during the Blood Donor episode, to: “Drinka Pinta Milka day” – poor spelling, but strong message. Mrs Thatcher clearly not a Hancock fan.
My first departure from straight milk was when my mum once bought a tin of Nesquik. It did involve a lot of stirring; if you drank a lot of it, one arm would become much larger than the other.
Such was the desire to have a more varied dairy diet, I once asked for the popular sixties dessert: Raspberry Ripple. At the time it was quite expensive, and we didn’t have much money, so my mum created it serving a block of vanilla ice cream you’d normally have in a wafer, covered with Ribena.
And I wondered why she never made it as a Michelin Star chef?
Humphrey is currently in HMP Wandsworth serving time for armed robbery.