When we eventually got a television, Mam and Dad watched it a lot. They’d watched it with the sound turned up high; they still couldn’t hear it. Mam probably thought if we’re paying for sound, I’m having all the sound I can get for my money. Mother told me the deaf had to pay for T.V. licenses, but the blind didn’t. I thought the explanation for this was, if you could hear what the chap was saying but couldn’t see him it was free, but if you could see him but had not clue what he was talking about you had to pay. So seeing a person on T.V. was more important than hearing what they were saying. Dad agreed with this, to him most television shows were a 'load of ducks'.

To illustrate, this he’d hold his hand up and do the action of a duck quacking then he’d shake his head to show his disapproval. In other words, television to him was a lot of mouths opening and shutting with nothing intelligible coming out. Consequently, he liked shows with lots of action, real life drama and, most of all, no talking. In other words, wrestling. For Dad, it had everything he could understand and he totally believed all he saw, which for some reason really annoyed me. It was like trying to reason with a Jehovah’s Witness. I gave up trying to persuade him that it was all rehearsed, realising that if I succeeded he’d lose a lot of pleasure in his black and white, goody and baddy, TV world.

Mam was very much influenced by television. It was a window that showed her things to add to her list of life, whilst they broadcast she was receiving and if they advertised it, she bought it. Mam got a red vinyl covered ‘Comfy Mat’ which 'took the strain out of tired feet while washing up'. The rest of the strain was taken out by making Doreen and me do the washing up. We were lucky, other kids didn’t have ‘Comfy Mats. I’m sure she was right, because no one bragged about washing up at school so I never mentioned we had a ‘Comfy Mat’. No use creating petty jealousies.

The advert said, ‘Oxo made the best gravy’. Mam took this literally and made gravy by putting one oxo cube in a gravy boat of warm water. Everyone knows that bad gravy doesn’t move on the plate. The trouble with Mam’s gravy was, it moved too much. If you allowed her to pour this beef flavoured water on your plate, it turned your mashed potatoes into a thin gruel sludge, which slid through your fork. Smiling, like the lady in the advert, Mam would mouth to me,
“Gravy?”
“No, thank, you.” I would mouth back. The “Thank”, involved a very satisfactory sticking out of the tongue on the “Th”, like a rude Maori warrior.
Then in unison with her I would mouth her reply, “But it’s Oxo”. We went through this ritual every time we had gravy. I always said, “No.”
She always said, “But it’s Oxo.”
Because of this, I always refused all gravy and it was years before I knew what real gravy tasted like. Dad, who didn’t like to give offence, accepted Mam’s gravy. He was crafty though; instantly the potatoes were on his plate he would squash them flat with his knife and draw the fork across them as if ploughing a field. The affect was to corrugate the spuds so that when the watery gravy was poured on, it ran off leaving the rest of his food stuck up like little islands in a black pond. Consequently, because Dad had her gravy she thought it was all right, so she always made it that way. If I copied Dad I was accused of playing with my food, so it was easier just to refuse the gravy.

Years later I had a similar experience with a lady called Ada Yinka Dada, She cooked me a meal of roast beef and potatoes and asked if I would like gravy?
So as not to give offence I said, “Yes please.”
She poured it, I tasted it, and the gravy was superb.
“How about Yorkshire Pudding?” She asked
“Yes please”, I replied my confidence growing.
To my amazement she carefully poured it, from a jug, onto my plate, as if decanting a precious port. She’d been given the recipe and it was assumed she’d know that it had to be cooked. She didn’t. At the time I thought of Dad drinking Mam’s gravy and so as not to give offence, I asked for a spoon and ate it.

You had to be very careful what you said you liked, to Mam. Heinz tinned spaghetti was advertised on the television, so she bought a tin. I said I liked it. Instantly the cupboard was full of spaghetti tins. She now knew what I liked, so she no longer needed to waste her precious time thinking what to feed me. The dog was sorted, he liked Pal. I liked tinned spaghetti and that was what we were both getting for the rest of our lives. Many meals later, I was tapping the flat of the back of my hand under my tomato coloured chin, double chin massage style. This is not the deaf sign for 'full up' it’s the sign for 'fed up'. I’d amplify the hand sign by mouthing,
“Fed up spaghetti”.
My mouth incidentally had the little groove one gets from sucking in miles of spaghetti. “Fed, up, spaghetti”. I repeated.
She looked at me with that, 'You ungrateful, fickle bastard' look, I feed you this expensive exotic foreign food and now you say you don’t like it. She then mouthed,
“You said, you like”.
In her world you didn’t sometimes, like and sometimes, not like, you just did not change your mind. Things were black or white, no grey, right or wrong, good or bad, no in-between.

The dog had more strength of character. He knew what he liked and he ate what he liked, the same thing every day. I suppose she thought I’d be no different. I offered to swap with the dog. She tossed her head in disgust and informed me, "Timmy didn’t like spaghetti." The next time I looked in the cellar head larder there was only tinned dog meat. I thought she’d called my bluff. I hid a tin to see what her reaction would be. She said nothing. The next day there was a tin of Fray Bentos meat pudding next to the dog meat. Did you know Fray Bentos is actually a town in South America? Which reminds me, one day I walked in and they were absolutely engrossed watching a game of polo, very popular in Argentina. In England though, it was a sport you rarely saw on television and never in real life. Dad had played hockey at school so he probably thought it was 'American Cowboy Hockey'. They were very puzzled; here were men on horseback charging up and down with big hammers. They’d never seen anything like this on the local football pitch.

They watched closely and at half time the men and horses left the pitch. Fair enough, but then all the spectators walked onto the pitch and started what’s called, ‘Treading In’. The clods of earth that the ponies kick up have to be trod back down so they have a nice flat pitch for the second half. So Mam and Dad are watching this game in which men on horses are belting up and down a field and suddenly they all stop and trot off the field. Then hundreds of people walk onto the field all looking down. That is the visual image seen by Mam and Dad. Mam turned to me and said,
“Someone lost something?” I, of course, rather than explain said,
‘Yes.” Then I added, “Poor people”.
She accepted this because the women were wearing headscarves not hats. When they all left the field before she could ask where they were going I mouthed,
“Couldn’t find it, must have left it at home.”
I left the room because I knew what the next question would be.

When I eventually started appearing on television myself, Dad was very proud. When we met anyone, he would draw a square with his two index fingers to represent a television set, point at me then stick his thumb up. This all meant, he’s on television and he’s very, very good. It did my ego a power of good until I found out he’d actually been watching Mike Harding, ‘The Rochdale Cowboy’, thinking he was me. Well, at the time I didn’t visit very often.

I have actually been mistaken for quite a few people including; Viv Stanshall, Clive Dunn and Magnus Pike.

The worst put down was when I got a letter, which started, ‘Dear Alf, I’m sorry I don’t remember your other name.’

I also realised how little notice people took of me in real life when I went into the Studio 58 coffee bar in Huddersfield. I’d been going in the place for years. One day the woman behind the counter said to me,
‘You’ve got red hair.”
What a strange remark I thought from someone I seen so often,
‘What do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh”, she said, “We’ve just got a colour Telly.”.