Happy Jihad's recent reference to actress Suzanne Somers - she of the auto-estrogene therapy movement (apparently it keeps the menopause away) - provides a welcome cue to post a few visuals of the corrupting Anglo influences that spoilt my pre-pubescent brain forever.
Somers, John tells me, was in Three's Company, the American version of Man About the House - the latter a show I was seriously addicted to when -uhm, like, little - much to the dismay of my mother, who had a dismissive little formula to describe anything British: "bad hair, bad teeth, bad wallpaper".
You must know that I come from a family where wallpaper is considered to be intrinsically common.
So the following had my mother pulling her hair every Friday evening, because I absolutely had to watch it (and in fact found it funny):
I was in London and Northampton over the weekend and you know what - nothing has changed. Nothing at all ....
I was at that time (the late seventies) a raving-loony Anglophile who'd swoon at the sight of an Underground sign. Which is why, years later on a Monday evening I would watch Francis Matthews display his chesthair and fake bake in the BBC's much beloved (by me) language programme Follow Me:
Yes, this is what English had to sound like, plummy and right posh (though Matthews was born in York, and probably capable of quite impressive Northern diphtongs).
Oh yeah (oh yeah), those were the humble years before Blighty turned from a slum tout court into a slum where you could purchase avocados and everyone has a plasma TV:
As well as into "The Home of the British Nazi Party."
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