Sitcoms, in a way, helped me form my social conscience.

I remember, when I was in Year Five, at school, our teachers used to tell us not to watch soap operas (A Country Practice was my favourite, and I still watched it) but I remember we had two teachers and that was a traumatic year. One of the teachers read us the story of The Witches, by Roald Dahl, and he was annoyed with a girl for talking and he sent her outside and got carried away and told her to stand further away, as she "smelt of dog's droppings." A few days later, the school principal came in and firmly told us that yes, we could, "read it. Enjoy the book. But don't go using lines from it to torment our classmates."

Three years later, ALF, came on, and I remember a line where he told a guy to, "Go home and make yourself a Clearasil sandwich." At the time, I had really bad acne and was tormented over it and a classroom bully told me to do the same thing. My self-esteem was really low and it affected my schoolwork.

I did, however, that year, lose myself in books, and I remember we had a holiday in spring and I had my first taste of David Line (real name Lionel Davidson) in a story about Jim Woolcott and Istavan Szolda.