This is an archive story from January 2008. For the most recent stories go here

CORNELIUS THE MODEL

Perkins: keeping sweat shop workers in full employment

Freud: a brand extension too far...?

Rumbold for sale

I have been many things in my time. A figurine, a key ring, a shampoo and a pencil case. After all, one should never stay still in one's career.

Berk

Of course, this was when I was making 'Perkins!' for ATV in the seventies. What we would now call a marketing department - but at the time called 'that spotty berk Nigel in the paisley shirt who sits behind the coffee machine' - suggested a line of what we would now call merchandising, but at the time called 'cheap tat made in a Hong Kong sweatshop based on our cheap tat television series'.

Non-existent twin brother

They would send me samples through the post. They arrived without any sort of covering note. It could be alarming.

For instance, the first time they sent me an 'action figure', I opened it up and was convinced someone had murdered and then shrunk my non-existent twin brother and mailed him to me, perhaps hopeful of a ransom demand. Most unsettling. My house boy at the time, Slatterly (all my house boys are called Slatterly, so much easier on the synapses) had to rush for the smelling salts.

Cavorting

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for 'Perkins!' to be a cult. I've told Slatterly to draw up plans for an extra wing for Rumbold Towers, in anticipation of DVD sales. Oh, the cavorting we'll have – once people realise 'Perkins!' wasn't under-budgeted, slackly-scripted and weakly acted – but merely ahead of its time.

Anon,

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