NAMES AND FACES

I do struggle with names and faces. For about twenty years they’ve failed to sink in, so much so that even when I occasionally go to Head Office, I still fail to recognise two of the three people I normally deal with, so that if they walk past me without introducing themselves, I wouldn’t recognise them even if they were in a Police line-up. Names I really am appalling at remembering, which is why, I suspect, that “social networking” has never come all that easily to me. Tell me your name and I will have forgotten it before you’ve finished the sentence. This, I realise, is not something that I ought to be proud of, I merely mention it as a fact about myself that I am learning to come to terms with. If you’ve ever bred since I have met you, just be aware that I simply do not recall the names of any of your offspring, and am never likely to unless I spend an enormous amount of time in your company (which, I imagine, is pretty unlikely...).

This is particularly true of so-called “celebrity culture…” I kind of think that my own “pop culture” knowledge stopped expanding to any great extent (with a very few exceptions) about twenty years ago, although I then have to remind myself of that mildly humiliating “New Year” party at the Theatre in the late 1990s where, as a game, they put pictures up of people in the news the previous year, and I didn’t recognise many of them either, so perhaps I’ve always been like this...?

It was the year of “TellyTubbies” and the person I’d been paired up with to play this game gave up on me in disgust when I couldn’t name any of them, never mind the rest of the faces being displayed.

I suppose it’s just got something to do with not having young people in my life to keep on boring me to death about any of the “current” culture – Pop Stars, Bad TV and the like - which might excite them, but which I would probably find terribly dreary. Or perhaps it’s just because I don’t go out much, or that I just tend to focus upon the things that interest me.

The problem is (if it is a “problem” at all…) that I have no interest in soap operas, or modern pop music performers, or TV talent shows, or any sport other than cricket, which means that most of the people that “everyone else” seems familiar with kind of fail to register on my personal radar.

This can cause problems. Whenever I do see an advert on TV, more often than not it is implied that I might know who the actors or “personalities” featuring in it are in order to get the joke, but, usually, I simply don’t have a clue about who they are, which rather ruins the intended “jokes” I suppose…

Once upon a long ago, I stood outside a large sports shop during a year when there was one of those “footballing world cup” events, which always appear to be on, was occurring (it may even have been THIS year as I vaguely remember there having been one...), and they had some huge stickers on the windows of some footballists. I kept wondering why small people kept stopping and pointing. I knew that they were not pointing at me, you understand, but I couldn’t understand why they were so fascinated by the pictures of what I assumed to be clothing models. It turned out that they were the then current England footballing team, which only goes to show…

There are other problems with not being all that interested in certain other events, too. There was a bloke in a suit chatting to someone on TV a few weeks ago and I asked who it was, only to be told “Prince William” which only really proves that any Royals that aren’t printed onto my money, or my stamps, are pretty much off my radar, too. I maintained that if he’d been wearing his uniform I would probably have known who he was, but this excuse was greeted with a certain amount of doubt.

I had to be told what an “Adele” was when “Skyfall” came out (although I still couldn’t pick her out of a line up either…) but then I ought to point out that I’m hardly in her “Target Demographic” I would imagine.

Andy Murray and eleven other people...

And I don’t really think that it’s “ignorance” as such, more “disinterest” in a lot of that modern “celebrity culture”, so I kind of blank it all out. You see, I could tell you without even looking it up that the actor who played Professor Zaroff, Joseph Furst, also played the villain in the television play “A Magnum for Schneider” that eventually led to the creation of the “Callan” TV series, but I wouldn’t generally expect anyone else to know that, so why should anyone else expect me to recognise an uncaptioned picture of  the twelve “Sporting Stars” who were nominated on this year’s “Sporting Personality” programme…?

Well I did think that I vaguely recognised the tenniser, but the rest did have me stumped...

This seemed to rather surprise one of my very few connections when I happened to mention this in that FizzBok place, in so far as they remarked upon it after an entire year of being otherwise silent.

“A whole year without commenting...” I thought, metaphorically rolling my eyes in disbelief, “And THIS is what you choose to fixate on…?”

I did wonder, for “comedy” effect, whether it was the current line-up of “Showaddywaddy” but it turned out that apparently it was most definitely NOT (although I suspect that there aren’t all that many people who might know what a “Showaddywaddy” is nowadays, either).

I did also suspect that some people thought that I was just joshing with them, and perhaps pretending to be ignorant of such things, but, perhaps sadly, eleven of those twelve people were (and are) actually all just faces in the crowd to me, and, when I asked if people wanted to fill in the blanks, someone suggested that there might be a “Bradley” in the mix, but failed to point out to me which one it was.

Bradley Whitford? (I’ve heard of him…) Bradley Whitaker? Bradley Wilson? (Lots of Bradleys with surnames beginning with “W” it seems… Although one or two of those might be names I’ve either made up or misremembered...) Brad Pitt…? Or perhaps it was the surname of one of the girls…? Is there a famous sporting Karen Bradley...?

I did wonder whether Picture Number 1 might be a boxer simply because he looked so surprised. Number 4 (I thought) resembled that Princess who’s pregnant (but because I didn’t watch “The” Wedding I remain a little bit vague about what that pair actually look like, as I think I mentioned earlier...) but I didn’t know whether or not she was also a sportsperson. I was pretty certain that Number 5 might be a racing driver judging by his overalls and, obviously, Number 10 is Andy Murray - who I do actually recognise because he’s been around for a while now, but also because of a documentary I saw about the Dunblane thing. I suppose that if you’d made me pick out which one I thought was Bradley Whoever, I would have gone with Picture Number 7 (but only because there’s something vaguely familiar about his face...)

I suppose, if I had been interested enough, I could have found out by a swift internet search (If I’d known their names, or could have been of a mind to...) or by sitting through hours and hours of sporty self-congratulation on a Sunday evening but, really, I couldn’t be bothered because that sort of awards show isn’t something I’d ever want to watch.

Instead, I went to bed at 8.00, hoping, perhaps, that someone else might just take a moment to fill in the blanks, but when I got up (rather ironically to listen to the cricket), the lack of further overnight correspondence meant that I could only surmise that nobody else knew or cared who they were either, which is, at least, encouraging.

So, in the absence of any further information, I’m going to go with (Top Row) Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb; (Lower Row) Harpo, Chico, Groucho, Andy Murray, Zeppo and Gummo.

Unless you know any different...?

Just for the record, and to perhaps prove whatever point needs making here, I’d have got 12/12 for the following bunch if anyone asked... ;-)