KRANKIE, WEE JIMMY – Womanchild. One of my earlier television appearances was on the B.B.C.'s Saturday morning show Going Live. Having long stopped watching television, I was unfamiliar with the shows format or the identity of any of the other guests, a rag-tag bunch of pop singers and naturalists who flounced about backstage, their vivid auras crackling with such migraine inducing vanity and malevolence that I was forced to briefly seek solace in a cupboard. On being ejected by a stage-hand, I was immediately set upon by a badly behaved child who'd been causing chaos around the set all morning, dashing in front of cameras, thumbs raised and shouting incomprehensibly, completely impervious to the attempted restraints of his exasperated father. “What's your name?” demanded the boy as I struggled to compose myself. “What are you famous for?” Obviously sensing his belligerent intentions, my aunt cuffed him across the head and, as he turned to flee, tripped him, causing him to fall and strike his head on the base of a lighting unit. As the father rushed toward us and leaned over the stricken, twitching boy, I was overwhelmed by one of the most unsettling images I had, at that time, experienced, one which, even now, I'm reluctant to present for public scrutiny. It is, however, contained in the Hamilton Coe archive to be released on my death.

 

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