Game For a Laugh in Knots Landing (1981)
I used to think I was on a TV show.
When I was 8 some teenagers grabbed me and smashed raw eggs over my head.
I was walking to school and it was a completely random event. I suppose I was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I thought it was proof that my life was a TV show.
As I ran home crying and screaming I expected to see Jeremy Beadle appear with a microphone and a camera crew.
I always watched far too much telly.
Sometimes it was the only way I could cope. I'd seen programmes like Candid Camera and Game For a Laugh, so maybe my life was part of a Saturday night show about people doing daft stunts? Otherwise, how could things like the 'eggs-on-the-head' incident happen?
Who takes eggs out of the house just to smash them on a little kid’s head?
A couple of months after that a bird shat on my head. First thing in morning, just after I'd set off for school, a hard lump of bird shite smacked onto the top of my head.
Once again I was running home, screaming.
Why me?
What was going to hit me on the head next? A tomato? A bottle? A roof tile?
Was I just part of some elaborate running gag?
I thought my life must be a TV show. There must be cameras everywhere. Maybe they were all hidden in lampposts and phone boxes! Life couldn't just be a series of random events - there had to be a script, there had to be some sort of plan.
All of this had to be TV.
I wasn't big-headed so I didn't think I was the star of a TV show. Most of the time, I thought I was a minor character in a Soap Opera.
My family watched a lot of Soaps. Most of them were about ordinary people going down the shops or shouting in a pub but there were also American Soaps about rich people going to parties or shouting at each other in big houses. All anybody seemed to do was argue about their kids or money, so it was very much like 'real' life.
My Dad was one of the main characters in my TV show – but he quit. He got his own spin-off series in a new town with a whole new family. That's what happened to one of the Ewing brothers - so it made sense when it happened to my Dad. Gary Ewing left Dallas and went to live in Knots Landing and my Dad left our house and got himself a little flat in Durham.
When Dad left, everything seemed to happen like it did in Soaps. They'd get rid of people and you might never see them again. There might be a cameo or a crossover episode every few years, but they never came back as a regular character.
It was the same at school – kids would leave and move to
a new town but then a few weeks later we’d get a brand-new cast member… just like when Tucker Jenkins got too old for Grange Hill and had to get a series of his own. When the kids across the street moved to Birmingham, they must have been getting their own spin-off show, too.
On TV, they could bring back characters and give them completely new faces (and some of them weren't even Time-Lords).
In some programmes, they might say a character had been away having plastic surgery, but at other times they'd just pretend that nothing had happened and carry on as normal.
I knew people who did similar things - they'd get rid of a husband, partner or friend, but then turn up with a new one who was similar to the original, but not quite right.
Some people find replacements and quickly move on.
Everything could be explained in terms of things I'd seen on TV:
Parents arguing? Typical Soap Opera.
Moving house? They've built us a whole new set.
Boxing Day with Grandparents? Christmas Special.
Going to a different school? Start of a new series.
Crapping yourself on a school trip? Out-take for 'It'll Be Alright On The Night'
Falling down the stairs and being knocked unconscious? Plot twist.
Beloved pet being given away? Even dogs get spin-offs.
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