Blast From the Past

I really shouldn't watch daytime TV - I suffered a massive shock whilst watching it today, I was lucky not to suffer a coronary.  I suppose I need to backtrack a bit here and explain why I was watching daytime TV on a weekday.   The long and the short of it is that I'm off work this week.  In part because I've got outstanding leave days I have to use before the start of June, otherwise I'll lose them, and the exterior paintwork of my house badly needs retouching after that never-ending Winter we've just exited.  I say 'retouched', the reality is that it needs to be stripped back to the woodwork and completely repainted.  I also had to finally do something about the jungle my back garden has become.  Anyway, needless to say that as soon as I plan on doing any outdoor work, the weather changes and it pours with rain.  Whilst I made a start on the garden yesterday while it was still sunny, today I was eventually forced back inside, soaking wet and with an aching back.  Where, naturally, I started flicking through the channels, (and this is where the story really starts).

Eventually, I alighted upon ITV3 just in time for the start of the repeat of an episode of Man About the House, a favourite sitcom from my childhood.  Not just any episode, but the very first.  You can't imagine the nostalgia and warm memories watching that familiar opening sequence, (with its highly sexist focus on Sally Thomsett's arse), and hearing that theme music, (actually a piece of library music rather than being specially commissioned - a common practice foe seventies sitcoms), stirred in me.  I loved this series when I was a kid.  It undoubtedly helped that it starred Richard O'Sullivan, fresh from playing the second lead to first Barry Evans, then Robin Nedwell, in the Doctor series, now finally given his own leading role.  I'd almost forgotten how engaging he was as Robin Tripp, and just how attractive Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett were.  Then, of course, there were the Ropers, their landlords, played by Yootha Joyce and Brian Murphy, whose appearances were usually the highlight of any episode. 

Man About the House was also notable for being that rarity, a sitcom which had a proper beginning and end.  Rather than being dumped into the middle of the existing situation, as many sitcoms did (and still do), it started with Robin Tripp becoming the new housemate of Chrissy and Jo and, after six series, ended with Chrissy marrying not Robin, but his brother Norman.  An ending which, I have to confess, has resonated through my life ever since.  As I recall, when Robin finally realises that Chrissy really is going to marry his brother and that he himself really does harbour genuine feelings toward her, he remembers how, when he and his brother were children, they'd had a pet dog which he'd loved, but always bitten him, yet it would do anything for his brother.  I know I'm not explaining it very well, but trust me, it was very poignant, as were the closing minutes of the final episode, as he realises that all those unresolved feelings for Chrissy will now never come to anything,  Anyway, the point is that I've been reminded of those scenes several times several times in my life.  Not that I've ever had anyone I have feelings for marry one of my brothers, you understand.  But, too often, I've found myself in the situation of realising that I've left it too late to express my real feelings to someone I've cared for.

But this isn't about my frustrated romantic life, it is about how watching an old sitcom gave me a shock.  Obviously, the shock wasn't being reminded of all those instances of unrequited love, rather it came at the end of the episode when I saw the year of production: 1973.  That's right - 1973!  Forty bloody years ago!  How can it possibly be forty years since I first saw that episode?  OK, I know it was clearly set in the 1970s, (the sideburns alone made that obvious), Richard O'Sullivan even makes a reference to the 'swinging seventies' in the episode, but it just doesn't seem possible that the seventies were that long ago.  I mean, when I was a kid back in the seventies, 'forty years ago' was the 1930s - that strange black and white era before World War Two, when people had outside toilets and lived in slums.  It's a sobering thought that kids today probably think about the seventies - my childhood - the same way!  To them, it must seem like another country, a different world, just as the thirties do to my generation.  Scary stuff!  Like I said, it gave me such a shock!  I wonder if there's another episode on tomorrow?