Anthony Powell made fun of the sort of credulous reader who, if a novelist mentions in a novel something left behind in a Brighton hotel room, will try to visit that hotel room in Brighton and look for it.
I am just that sort of person, my disbelief totally suspended. Applying Powell’s dictum to my behaviour as a telly-viewer, I’d give anything to stay at Crossroads, dine at Fawlty Towers, travel on Reg Varney’s bus.
The settings are always enchanted for me – Walmington-on-Sea is exactly like St Leonards-on-Sea, and perhaps I live in the vicinity for that very reason. I’m always on the lookout for Private Godfrey’s sister Dolly.
I’d work in a factory if it had a canteen like the one in Victoria Wood’s , where people can ask the staff, ‘Are you
