I decided to share some of my experiences here - many of which I find amusing when I look back - you may or may not agree - anyhow, here are 'me mee-maws' (or is it 'memoirs'?) which may explain why I'm like I am today!

It was my first day at school, and like anyone going on a new venture I was frightened yet excited. As we all stood there in the classroom I did something that I have never done since - I wet myself, but instead of declaring this to my teacher I had formed a plan: I stared at the ceiling with such intensity that soon enough every other child there stared also.

'What are you all looking at?' asked the teacher.

'Please miss' I replied, 'please miss, I think the roof's leaking'.

I could have got away with it if I hadn't been wearing light grey trousers; for all around the crotch and inner thighs were sodden, and you didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what had happened.

Thankfully she took me quietly away to the toilets to clean myself up.

'I'll wait outside' she said, aware of my shame and need for privacy. 'Leave your trousers and underpants where they are. Tell me when you've done and I'll give you another pair of trousers to wear. I cleaned myself up and called out and she opened the door slightly to hand me the trousers.

The School Trousers!

Nothing had prepared me for this sight: had some drunken or disgruntled sewing machine operator made these? The measurements may have been taken from a hippopotamus without street cred, they were wide-waisted, short legged and covered in hideous huge purple and grey checks. Even worse was the discomfort I suffered once they were on. I have never had to suffer the indignity of lice or flea infestation, but I'm sure that 'The School Trousers' had been made to simulate the sensation. So out I went scratching and adjusting myself and trying the best I could to fit into the trousers. There stood the teacher patiently waiting without a look of scorn or sympathy but one of understanding.

'Please Miss,' I ventured 'but me Mam'll go mad if I don't get my pants back'

'Don't worry' she said, ' they'll be washed and ironed before half-past three'

'And my underpants?'

'Yes, those too'.

I'd never had my underpants ironed before - a rare treat!

At that point, the only thought in my head was 'thank God I don't wear brown y-fronts like Brian' - Brian being the younger brother of my friend Lee: one day Lee pulled down his brother's shorts to show a gang of us the colour of his underwear - no that we requested this, but what are brothers for if not to cause embarrassment?

'Uugh look' he said as he pointed to the said garment 'brown they are. Do you know why he wears brown underkecks? So he never has to wipe his bum and nobody'll know!'

And from that moment on Brian was somehow distanced from the rest of us.

Even at an early age I knew that I was destined to become a stuntman, an imbecile or someone uniquely talented - I'm still not sure which if any I achieved!

I think it all started at the age of six, when I had seen the sport of diving on television: later that evening I filled the bath with about five inches of water (not too deep, I didn't want to drown you see - clever lad me y' know), pulled a chair out from the bedroom and into the bathroom, climbed on, held my hands together prayer-wise and bent my knees together before...

DUNK!

"Mam! Mam!"

Tears, bump on the head etc. You get the picture.

Later that evening I asked a question, the answer to which was detrimental to my future welfare:

"Mam, I won't end up daft 'cause I've done that will I?"

My mother squirmed for a second then smiled and replied:

"'Course not"

Did she tell the truth?

Read on...

Another example of stupidity was when I was around seven or eight of age and had to have a standard eye examination whilst at school: it compromised of the usual wall charts and colour-blindness tests (the results of the latter then and still even now being dismal - how I can manoeuvre through traffic lights I'll never know!) - and then the big one!

The ophthalmoscope!

Sounds impressive, but isn't - it's the little hand held eye-examining thingie with a magnifier and light )no doubt available on eBay for a couple of quid nowadays).

So what was my problem? Nothing at all, the doctor kept telling me to look at the light and I did.

A puzzled expression appeared on her face and she asked me again to look at the light.

And I did - again... and again... and... well, you get the general idea.

The upshot being that my mother was called in and was informed by the doctor that I had a very bad squint which might possibly require surgery at some stage to be corrected.

My mother (God bless her) stuck up for me and said there was nothing wrong with my eyes at all; then, like all good mothers, she grabbed hold of me and snarled:

"What the hell have you been playing at?"

"Nothing" I protested, "She told me to look at the light and I did, over and over again."

And what protected me from painful surgery?

The simplest of actions - a point from my finger...

At the lightbulb on the ceiling - the very light that I had been focusing on!

And did we all sit around and laugh at this simple misunderstanding, like on some sitcom?

Did we buggery! I got a smack round the legs and was dragged away.

And even now all these years later, I have regular eye examinations (as I wear contact lenses) I still dread the "look at the light" part of the examination.

But conditioning and a good memory of slapped legs prevent my eyes from veering towards the ceiling, I can tell you!

I could well have been on my way to becoming an alcoholic at the age of nine thanks to the introduction of a home-made liquor - beetroot wine.

This foul sounding yet pleasant sweet-tasting spirit had been given to my mother by a lady who was something of an authority on home brewing which was unusual as she was a Methodist - surprisingly for a good religious woman, it was she who said to my mother:

"Go on, let him have a glass... it's not strong! What harm can it do?"

What harm indeed! I loved the taste. I have always had a sweet tooth and as disgusting as this sounds, can still today devour a tin of sweetened condensed milk in one go - so as this drink was particularly sweet I was hooked!

My mother must have realised this and did that which she thought would be best - she gave the bottle away so I could not be tempted (as if I would!).

One afternoon a week later she had to nip out to collect some shopping and I was left to my own devices. As I said I was an addict to sweet liquids and decided to do something that very nearly comatosed me - I decided to make my own beetroot wine!

So how to go about it?

I knew nothing about fermentation, had no clean empty bottles and demi-johns and more to the point no beetroots or sugar.

So like all amateur inventors, I made do with whatever I could lay my hands on.

Improvisation was the word.

So alcohol... I knew that my granddad had the traditional 'medicinal' bottle of scotch whisky on the top shelf of a cupboard (this I knew from previous investigations - I was always inquisitive). Great. That was a start - so into a mixing bowl went the full bottle.

Next. It didn't look like beetroot wine as it was practically colourless, and it wasn't sweet - in fact I thought it tasted foul.

Then another idea came to me - use Ribena blackcurrant cordial: a sweet sugary syrup that produced a fruit drink often given to children and the cause of many a rotten tooth at the time. So in went that bottle. The flavour improved and it had a lovely deep red velvety colour and quite a pleasant taste.

As I said, I am a sweet-stuff addict, so after tasting it, I kept on tasting it...

Until I emptied the whole damn bowl! Somehow the world seemed to take a shift sideways and I lost control of all my legs - all of them? How many did I have? I tried to cry out but (for once in my entire life) words failed me. I decided that it was time to kiss the carpet and fell headfirst onto the floor.

I remember absolutely nothing else about that incident except for my mother not speaking for me for quite some time. Nothing was ever said on the matter, well not to me anyway.

Needless to say however, I wasn't given any alcohol again - not even at parties or at Christmas!

How can I describe my Granddad?

In my eyes he could do no wrong. He had come to live with us when I was very young and always spoke to me as if I was an adult; I respected him and am grateful for two gifts that he gave to me - a unique (if slightly warped) sense of humour and the ability to become an exceptional speller.

An example: at the age of around three or four I had heard the word 'diarrhoea' used in a conversation somewhere and asked what it was. Now whereas an adult might silence a child, he explained it and then taught me how to spell it. And spell it I could, from memory at any given time.

Some children perform party tricks such as singing or dancing much to the delight (and sometimes prompting) of a parent -  my particular skill however was an abhorrence.

"And what can you do lad?" I would be asked, and before my mother or father could stop me, I would say proudly:

"I can spell diarrhoea... see... D-I-A-R-R-H-O-E-A.". No one ever applauded.... perhaps they were scared I might follow through with a practical demonstration! 

Granddad was also an avid reader and loved cowboy novels. When I came home from school he would often shout me over to show me a passage that he had earmarked, usually it would involve breaking wind (I never knew why cowboys needed to fart so much), much to my delight.

I do remember however that Granddad had a cruel sense of humour, which I think passed over to me when he died. An example: if I had a balloon as a child I would happily bounce it up and around the room (this was pre-Nintendo era you must understand). He would sit with a cigarette in his hand and watch for a while before asking me to pass it over to him, and that he would send it back to me.

Now I knew for a fact that he loved to burst balloons with his lit cigarette, and was reluctant to do as he wished. The conversation would go something like this - he would frown and say:

"Don't you trust me?"

"No" I'd reply, "you always say this, and you'll still pop my balloon!"

"Well that's nice" he'd sulk, "and after all I've given you" etc. etc.

That clinched it. Emotional blackmail! I'd feel guilty, launch the balloon and...

POP!

Followed by a fit of uncontrollable laughter from Granddad, and the realisation that I would never learn from this!

Granddad also told me some tales of when he was younger, most were humorous and I still laugh about them today. Here is the one that most sticks out in my mind:

At one time he was a lorry driver, delivering heavy goods along the British motorways. On one occasion his wagon broke down somewhere in Wales and he went to look for help: the roads were mostly deserted and he wandered a mile or two until he came upon a large farmhouse. As is usually the case in these scenarios (like some second rate British horror movie) there was no telephone, and, as it was late, no-one in the farmhouse was prepared to drive out and summon help.

"I'll tell you what I'll do" said the farmer, "You can stay here for the night, I'll put you in baby's room - there's a bed by his cot, you're welcome to use it".

Granddad gratefully accepted the kind man's hospitality, and as a gesture he offered to take the farmer and his son's to a nearby pub where the drinks for the evening would be paid for by him.

All went swimmingly, and the revellers had such a good time that they made Oliver Reed look like a teetotaller. All staggered back and Granddad found himself asleep in the bed in baby's room.

As many people know, the human bladder has a distaste for alcoholic drink, and Granddad's was no exception - at around two o'clock in the morning it told him that it needed emptying - urgently!

But what to do? Granddad did not know the layout of the building, and was something the worse for wear.

His mind raced, and the need for relief pained him. He wondered: where was the toilet? Did they even have a toilet?

Even in his drunken state he hit on the perfect solution - take a pee in baby's cot! Let the cherub take the blame... just one night in his own piddle wouldn't harm the little bugger, would it?

So cradling the child in his arms and careful not to wake him, Granddad gently placed him on the bed before unzipping his flies and getting rid of a good few pints of spent ale into baby's cot.

Heavenly relief! Although ashamed of what he had just done, he felt so much better for it.

"Sorry little 'un" he said to baby "you're going to have to take the blame for this one!" and he went to pick baby up just as a noxious smell hit his nostrils.

To say that baby had been 'unwell' was an understatement - baby had been very unwell and had let loose the very stuff that Granddad was to teach me the correct spelling of many years later...

Baby had had diarrhoea.

This particular story ends with Granddad opening the window and disappearing away into the night, probably leaving the farmer and family wondering... 'who was that generous man with the bowel problem?' for many years to come.

Every year we went away to a holiday camp, and at the age of twelve I was incarcerated at a well-known Butlins Detention Centre in Skegness, Lincolnshire.

How best to explain a Butlins Holiday Camp? Well, it was like a small town built up out of apartments and entertainment centres, and had a huge fence around it with security guards at various points to prevent the general public from entering (and maybe the holidaymakers from escaping - I can't be sure, I never tried to bust out!): it offered a cheap holiday where meals would be provided in a dining hall and all entertainment laid on as part of the package. Not as idyllic as 'The Village' in Patrick McGoohan's 'The Prisoner', but I must confess, it was only marginally better than the huge cess-pit that New York became in 'Escape From New York'.

So my Mam, Dad, brother and myself all got off the train, bundled onto a coach with our suitcases and bags and were taken to the gates of the camp, where Dad had to produce various documents of authenticity; it was like some horrible pastiche of a prison camp, but the irony was lost on me at the time - to me it was simply a holiday and I was going to enjoy myself!

Another thing that failed my attention at the time were the amusing titles given to the camp entertainers - they were called 'Redcoats' as each wore the obligatory red blazer as a uniform, and were known as 'uncle' or 'auntie' which was followed by their Christian names. How odd it seems now! To be a child and go up to a complete stranger and address him as 'uncle' would be abhorrent in these times of child molestation and abduction, but back then in the early eighties no-one batted an eyelid.

So there I was locked in a bizarre brightly-coloured prison for seven days, and I loved it! I went swimming, drove go-karts, went to the cinema and best of all to the kids theatre where I found the genius of comedy that television had lost out on...

Uncle Rhubarb.

Uncle Rhubarb was an unusual name for a man with red curly hair, freckles, a huge red tartan cap and a red-clown nose - I always thought that a rhubarb plant was either green or purple but here was a red one! He'd entertain us with low-class entertainment: poor quality jokes and second-class magic tricks were followed by bumblings and stumblings on stage plus the traditional 'look out behind you' routines of pantomime. I had made a few friends and we all loved this Caledonian Clown: we were like some fools enjoying the antics of a juggler or ventriloquist heard performing on the radio, we were naive and used to rubbish like this - so we applauded everything and cried out for more.

Later in the week I went along with my new found friends to get an autograph from our idol. We merrily trotted of to hunt down his apartment (commonly known as a 'chalet'), and like amateur Columbos, we could not be deterred from our investigation.

We eventually found the chalet. It was away from the rest of the camp around the back of the kitchens and looked... well, kind of 'lived in'. There was rubbish cast over the front lawn and a rusted deckchair stood on sentry by the open door. Music blared out from within. We were mortified! How could they give such a hovel to this great man? Surely he should be in some mansion, not this pigsty.

Urged on by my new friends I shouted in through the door:

"Uncle Rhubarb, Uncle Rhubarb! We think you're great. Can we have your autograph?"

There was a growl then nothing. This was too much like 'Red Riding Hood'! Had he been eaten by a wolf? We hoped not and I called again. This time there came the strangest of responses:

"Hawaayenfackyersellz! Hahmnocumminoot, yerweesheytz!".

(I leave to you to translate - subtitles available on Ceefax p. 888!)

Which was followed by an empty whisky bottle landing near our feet.

We concluded that Uncle Rhubarb had not been eaten by a wolf (perhaps the whisky fumes had driven it away) and beat a hasty retreat.

And so we carried on with our holiday, all remaining friends and having a good laugh together, although we had mixed feelings about comedy and clowns from then on, and we didn't go to see Uncle Rhubarb again.

And even today so many years later I can only watch slapstick being performed if it is in black and white (such as Laurel and Hardy - particular favourites of mine) - if I saw any of the genre shown in colour I might see red somewhere along the line which would bring Uncle Rhubarb back to mind! Even though the man was utterly rubbish he still lives on in my memories sixteen years after I saw him! Good or bad, it's just another piece of junk cluttering up the attic of my mind.