1988: Trying to get away

Comic Relief is 25 years old. I can hardly believe where the time has gone.

At this time I was living in Shepherd's Bush. BBCland. You'd often see the odd familiar face - and when I say odd, I mean odd: Simon Potter lived in the flat above my flatmate's sister. Remember him? Thought not. But it was the home of TV and I lived there.

Everyday on my way home I'd get off the bus outside the theatre where Wogan was playing (now the Shepherd's Bush Empire), past Lime Grove and up the Uxbridge Road to my flat.

On the day Comic Relief was born, I'd been into work to clear my desk and on my way back through the Bush I saw two policeman being filmed wearing red noses. Of course, it was Comic Relief day! What enormous fun. And there's a TV camera. Wow. I'm right in the thick of it.

If only.

My job was finishing, the office as being shut down. I was glad, as I hated it (see 1987: We were watching TV and 1987: Counting down to judgment day for more info should be interested). What I was going to do now was anyone's guess, but it was the perfect opportunity to watch Open Air and Sons & Daughters and get up late, not answer the phone to my parents who'd inevitably badger me regularly to get another job - had I been round the shops asking for work, or what about that friend of theirs who worked in accounts at American Express?

I had no intention of following any of these up, though I half-heartedly did just to get them off my back. I wanted to do something interesting. I'd have to wait another eight years for that to actually happen, but in the meantime here I was in Shepherd's Bush, the hub of the British TV industry. Surely the job of my dreams is just around the corner. I quite wanted to be on the telly, but I really wanted to work in the proper media. I scoured the media Guardian for TV-related jobs, bought Broadcast magazine, Media Week and other magazines way out of my ambit containing jobs I was totally unqualified for. Look! Thames need a weatherman. And oh, I don't know what that job at the BBC entails but I'll go for it.

Back then, when you applied to the Beeb, there was a very long and complicated series of forms you had to fill in - by hand of course. If you applied a lot, you got your own reference number. I eventually got this and it meant you didn't have to worry about filling in all the personal bits and pieces as they already had them of file. But it was to no avail. I never worked for the BBC. I now know that's a good thing, having had enough dealings with them over the past 18 years. I've satisfied my cravings for the soon to be no more BBC TV Centre and I'm utterly relieved that also realised early on that being on TV was not for me. But that's another story, coming soon.

So Comic Relief day, a chance to be a part of something fun and exciting. At least, that's how I felt in those days. Today, I won't watch. It's all in a good cause of course, but I don't like being browbeaten by celebrities into giving generously. I make my own arrangements that side of life, and I also can't bear the forced fun. Newsreaders doing a routine to Sheila Take A Bow is no longer a novelty. Same goes for mixing up the casts of EastEnders and Corrie and having them do I Don't Know How To Love Him dressed as musical hall cockneys. We expect the unexpected so much it's actually rather predictable. There'll never be another Frank Bough and Eddie Waring doing There's Nothing Like A Dame. Still, you've got to admire all the good work they've done and the sentiment behind it.

So what was playing this day at my flat? Why Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now, of course. What a corker. This would soundtrack the next month or so when before I actually did get a new job. In a shop. Roll on, 1995.