Those of an older disposition know that eventually all things will come around again. Sometimes we use that knowledge as a reason for holding on to stuff that should have been thrown out years ago or delude ourselves that by keeping a particular object d'art we will ultimately make a vast financial killing on it. The most recent manifestation of this is the fashion industry's fetish with all things 70s, a preoccupation that shows itself on the high street as an impossibility to find any trouser without a flare. The only thing good about all of this is that we now have the sense (haven't we?) to declare to all in the shop that they were a fashion disaster then and are even more so now!
But this infatuation with a supposed past is somehow acceptable if the product in question has some kind of nostalgic value. So it is that I read this week that one of the goods selling best for Christmas this year is the ubiquitous annual. Children of my generation were kept quiet on the big day not with X Boxes or private DVD players but with a large book crammed with completely predictable and unlikely cartoon capers. The most prized were the Beano and Dandy annuals because they had characters that everyone knew about, childish heroes such as Denis the Menace, Desperate Dan (I never did know why he was always desperate), Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids, although anyone who teaches for a living will tell you that the Bash Street Kids were not imaginary and based entirely on all the children they have ever taught.
Needless to say that with all these wonderfully anarchic fools to be availed off, I was every year, without fail, given a Rupert Bear annual! I know, I know. The fact that my parents thought I needed to read about the exploits of an overgrown teddy bear dressed in a red jumper, yellow plus four pants and a matching scarf worn a la Biggles tells one much about their expectations of me. It is now time I confessed to a truth I have been carrying for too many years. I hate Rupert the Bear.
For a start he behaved. Behaving is not what you want to do as an eight year old, especially on Christmas Day. Secondly that damned outfit he wore was too close to the pristine Ladybird gear mother insisted I wore when all I wanted was an old pair of trousers, a tee shirt and a good pair of shoes to kick the daylights out of my best friend, who unfortunately was at the time called Nigel, which again might explain a great deal. What self-respecting working class child growing up in a city ever had a friend called Nigel? The result of all this behaving on the part of Rupert, and my having to read it is that I am, and always have been, subservient and malleable, a martyr to the worst excesses of authority. My parents might argue that but for Rupert I might have found myself stuck forever in a revolving door at Stormont, but surely there is a happy medium.
And of course you had to actually read Rupert. Unlike the Dandy or Beano where the story was obvious from the expressions on their faces, Rupert and Badger (God help me!) were tiny in each frame so that the writers could cram in as many words as possible. Children don't want to read on Christmas Day. They want to eat selection boxes, stuff themselves with turkey, drink non-alcoholic wine, throw up and go to sleep clutching the bulging eyes and teeth of Plug as he tries to spell his own name while being pelted with rotten fish by Smiffy.
Even in later life Rupert came back to haunt me and as an adult I am traumatised by the knowledge that Rupert appeared on a daily basis in the Daily Express. So not only do I behave, but I also talk with a Middle-England upper class vocabulary and harbour fascist tendencies.
Of course the interesting thing about all of this renewed interest in annuals is that it is still aimed at my age group because they are 'Best of' collections. The best of the Dandy and so on so I doubt if many new recruits will be dragged from the killing field that is the contemporary computer game - although I am reliably informed that for this generation there will be a best of Heat.
And if the reading of Rupert explains aspects of my psyche what are we to make of the fact that the 'Best of' I really would like in my stocking this year is the one I was continually jealous of as I grew up – 'The Best of Jackie'?
