On inappropriate crushes

On inappropriate crushes

Excuse: I was a kid.

Actually, I was fifteen and ought to have known better.

Good God, I was fifteen, studying like a girlie swot towards my O-Levels, and I had the hots for a children's TV character.

While my contemporaries were pulling themselves blind over pages 210-240 of the Grattan catalogue, before graduating to page three of the Sun and the fold-out delights of Escort magazine, I was going all doe-eyed and inexplicably filthy over a dead Russian.

Ah yes, Nadia Popov hay-fever suffering dead person from Rentaghost. Bloody Rentaghost. Trouser-rending lust does strange things to fifteen-year-old youths, and The Honourable Susan Frances Harmer Nicholls made me watch every last episode of an increasingly camp, desperate kids' sitcom.

I like to look back on this sorry period as a transition in my life. A transition from fancying dead Russians, to having the hots for the none-more-alive Janet Ellis on Blue Peter.

Of course, now that TV's Ms Popov (deceased) has become TV's Audrey Roberts, I now cannot watch Coronation Street without an inward squirm of embarrassment.

Luckily, now that her lustful advances have seen off Fred Elliott, she will be mine, all mine!

I am not mad.

I mean: tell me about your inappropriate crushes. I promise not to collate them into some form of hastily cobbled together dossier for blackmailing purposes. Honest.