Now where did I put that opinion?

The non-ratings season has had some top little shows hasn’t it. I have enthused about the non-ratings season to you before but as if you’d remember, sweet nsrs. You've minds of sieves and remember sweet fanny adams about things past, present and lost and need me to act as prompt and diarist of your dreary lives, which I’m happy to do while advantageously spreading lies about good times, feuds and birthdays. Haven’t been sprung yet and you’ll forget in one, two...

Yes that’s right, we were talking about non-ratings season. Yes, I said hasn’t it been good, mother. Yes. Very good. Lovely. We’ve been enjoying all those interesting dramatisations of English lives, haven’t we, mother. Adored Wallis and Noblet (about he who would never be crowned and his abdication in 1936) – would have liked to have seen more about those greedy toads lives in exile but have since read the Viceroy's daughters by Anne de Courcey and the thirst for historical information about Anglo/German aristos has beeen well and truly slaked. Rivetted by Elizabeth David portrayed by a Charlotte Rampling look-a-like and with Hot Ploddy Phil Hunter’s wife Cindy playing Elizabeth’s sister. It was a boozy, racy, adventurous and kind of volatile tale. Ooh we’ve also been enjoying that adaptation of The Line of Beauty, haven’t we. Oh the sex scenes have been a bit too much for some, haven't they, mother, but I for one find it absurd that people comment on that rather than the absolutely vile characters.

I did try to read the book two years ago but couldn’t. The characters were just too ghastly. On the telly the characters’ hideousness is slightly diluted in that you only see them for an hour whereas when you read those characters penetrate your mind and haunt you. I am looking forward to tomorrow night’s finale of LoB.

The Line of Beauty being set in Blighty in the 80’s and whatnot caused my mind to wander to one day in 1988, I think the Poll Tax (?) had just been passed. I was walking down the Cromwell Road or was it Gloucester Road, oh as if you’d remember, I was on a pilgrimmage to Froxbury Mansions, and this woman in her 50’s wearing one of those enormous and hideous Liberty scarves/shawls (which were in fashion for her set at the time) around her shoulders bowled up to me for I was kitted as a Sloane Ranger, sporting Fergie bow and diaphanous skirt, peppering my speech with OK Yah in between scoffing profiteroles and throwing bread rolls all the while bopping to Bros on the Sony Walkman.

Anyway for some reason this woman, probably a Mrs Towers-Smythe or Miss Dodo Macintosh, came up to me and boomed in my face “oh isn’t it marvellous SHE got it through”. I sought clarification with a “sorry, what?” and expressed my opinion to which she replied through her nasal passage:

“Oh you’re from Orstralia are you? Happy Bicentenary!”