Oh dear

As you can see from the picture, my goddaughter and her mum know me all too well. With the huge choice of TV viewing options available now, I wonder if today's teenagers have the same passions for TV characters that we had in the sixties. Watching the Man From UNCLE was the absolute highlight of my week and had to be planned carefully since it involved ingratiating myself to my friend's (now said goddaughter's mum) parents so that I would be welcome for tea and then making sure all homework was completed before the big moment arrived when the TV would be switched on and the insistent sixties beat of the theme music would make my stomach fill with butterflies. The reason I had to be at my friend's house was of course that we had no TV set at home. My parents quite rightly assumed that it would interfere with homework, and other activities such as 'playing out' and reading which were my main forms of distraction would also suffer. They still suffered, particularly the homework which gave way to long involved stories of Napoleon Solo and, in particular, Illya Kuryakin, who was just the most romantic Russian spy imaginable. If there had been an A-level in the Man From UNCLE I would have been in heaven. As it was, Thursday evenings came pretty close.