Blushbaby

I was recently asked to describe my most embarrassing experience, for a television company. I replied that as my entire existence has been a parade of mortifying incidents, it would be difficult to single out one. Like many a flippant remark, it was  completely true. Shortsighted, clumsy, and with the co-ordination of a collapsing deckchair, I seem to have had more than my share of blushmaking moments. This is a source of immense amusement to the few friends who have remained uninjured by my antics. My family,having endured the fallout for longer, are more exasperated than diverted.

I am in the process of moving flats after four years in Gambier Towers. When I moved in,my landpersons were dubious about the Child, feeling that he might cause injury to fittings  and fixtures. Of course, he was, and is, blameless.  It is his Mamma who has the ability to make a room a hell-hole. My friend A and I went to Dublin for a week. She photographed our pristine hotel room when we arrived, and also on the day we left. By then it looked like the aftermath of a jumble sale presided over by Keith Moon.

I was very briefly tidy when I was a student. A mixture of perversity and survival instinct.I had seen what happened to other flats lived in by seekers after knowledge. I shared a house with five chaps. One was a medical student.Whenever I go to see a doctor it always horrifies me to remember that they were all once upon a time, medical students...

In our "living room", things were, indeed, living. Sometimes the carpeting in the corners would move,as something nestled down for the winter. Someone had poured blue curacao over the television. Someone else had tried to find out what happened when you set light to it.The vileness eventually got to me, and I moved in with two Leeds drag queens. "Norma Jean" and "Lady F" were domestic goddesses.The only cause of dispute in that household was the occasional disappearance of my shoes. They were fond of gin and of baking cakes, both of which figured largely at their "Little Soirees" on Sunday afternoons. Every queen in West Yorkshire would turn up. I was always the only woman at the party with the genitals I had been born with. Except when my Mother visited me at weekends. She adored them, and it was reciprocated. "Your Mother Is SO CAMP!" they would exclaim, as she performed her "Carmen Miranda" for them with a fruit bowl from Leeds Market on her head.

Round about this time,I got a job as a "Graduate Trainee" at Miss Selfridge. It was 1976, and our uniform was flared trousers and a cheesecloth shirt. I had hair I could sit on ( mind you,doesn't everyone?),and perilous platform shoes. Always a show-off, I had volunteered to give a speech about the training programme to some aspirant fashionistas from the Fashion Department at my Alma Mater. I swished onto the podium. Before I had reached the mikestand, however, the room erupted in laughter.The leg of a pair of grey tights, which in my slutty way I had left in my discarded uniform trousers, the night before, was dangling from my stylish flares,like a long damp snail trail.

Another high-fashion comedy moment came about when I was modelling at a hair show for Wella, in the giddily glamorous environment of Preston Guildhall. We are now in the 80's, and I look like Aladdin in huge puffball trousers .There is a badger on my head.  I have the photographs to prove this. Shorter than the proper models, I was allowed to wear heels.More of an idiot than anyone else on stage, I got my heel wedged between two sections of the catwalk.This made me do an impersonation of an Aberdonian drunk spinning around a lampost.  It also caused a seven-model pile-up. The very butch Australian make-up artist dashed on stage and lifted me out of my shoe,to wild applause. He was the only one who would speak to me, during  the long silent journey back in the minibus.

Then there was getting stuck in a tree on Caldy Island,where the monks gave me a wide berth; and the time I  woke up in a Portuguese nun's bed in a priory just outside Keighley. She wasn't in it, which was as well. I can now,perforce,apologise in several languages; but Portuguese is not yet one of them. When not alarming ecclesiastics, I was prone to incidents with fire. I am surprised and pleased that I am still alive, and haven't done more damage. If you know me, you will know that these stories are but the tip of an iceberg.If you are reading this and you are my insurer, it is all made up.