Boyhood of a Super-Nerd
Spaceships and aliens and monsters, oh my!
I’ve always felt that to completely grow up, to turn your back on the things that once meant the most to you, would be the most terrible betrayal of the child you once were. Almost like murdering your juvenile self. To that end, I still love all the same things that I did as a kid, only ever adding to my interests – never subtracting.
As a collector, film critic and, for want of a better title, a professional appreciator, my mission in life is to both celebrate, and maintain, the memory of everything I can’t think about without getting a lump in my throat. Which is a lot. My nostalgia knows no bounds and my enthusiasm has no brakes.
This calling of mine hardly materialised from thin air.
My mother was a nerd before the term existed. When I was small, every Saturday afternoon, we’d pull the sofa close to the TV and sit, cuddled up, eating snacks and watching old movies. It was my favourite time of the week. My mum loved musicals, comedies, thrillers... Really anything good. She introduced me to Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant and Bette Davis, to Katharine Hepburn, Bob Hope and Gene Kelly. Also directors – unveiling the worlds of Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Michael Curtiz and the like.
And while we watched those fine old films, long before the invention of commentary tracks, she’d tell me about the casts – from the stars to the supporting players – sharing stories from their lives and the making of their movies. She brought cinema from the age of serials and newsreels to life, and honestly, it intoxicated me. I hung on her every word and though at school lessons rarely sank in, at home, with my mum, I retained every word.
I was five when Tom Baker's Doctor Who blew my mind with all of time and space, six when I first frolicked with the creatures of the night, and eight when Star Wars revealed my life path. Having been primed for geekery by my mother, and further encouraged to embrace the dorky arts by my collector cousin Ronald, I fully embraced my destiny: by nature and nurture a nerd, and proud of it.
The Doctor will see you now
“Would you care for a jelly baby?”
I cared. I cared very much. I would have loved for the Doctor to give me a jelly baby. I would have loved it even more if he’d invited me into the TARDIS for a tour, and maybe swept me off on an adventure or two alongside Sarah and Harry. What fun that would have been.
I thought about that a lot when I was five years old, and Baker’s Doctor was new to TV. I’d sit on the floor right in front of the telly, my face not a foot from the screen, and watch with wide-eyed wonder as my hero, and his loyal companions, dashed about, forever saving time and space.
My brothers – all much older than me – often teased me while I watched the programme, as they knew I believed it was real. That it was, in fact, some incredible documentary series, and nothing they ever said convinced me otherwise.
My glorious delusion reached its peak several months into 1975, when my father, who owned a chain of clothes shops called Austin’s Menswear, opened a grand new store and, to pull in the punters and wring some plugs from the papers, hired my hero to make the mother of all personal appearances.
When we arrived at the shop, a crowd had already gathered outside. And no wonder, because there was the TARDIS, parked in the street for all to see. And suddenly, there too was the Doctor, waving to everyone from the roof, flashing that famous, infectious smile of his, dressed exactly as he did in the documentaries I watched him in every Saturday night.
Inside, later, I stood beside him and, gazing worshipfully as he signed autographs, asked him question after question about his incredible adventures. Where had he been before he came to my dad’s shop? How difficult was it to drive the TARDIS? Where were Sarah and Harry? And didn’t he ever get hot wearing that scarf?
The shop was heaving with people, all eager to snatch a moment with the Doctor, and yet there I was, glued to his side, conducting my first interview. I remember him looking at me, then the crowd, and then shrugging, booming to the room, “WHO IS THIS KID?!"
It was all very good-natured, of course, and I didn’t mind when everyone burst out laughing. I rather enjoyed the attention, to be honest. And the Doctor was just as wonderful as I’d anticipated. It was pretty much the most magical thing that could ever have happened to a kid, and a memory I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Though I don’t remember when, the time eventually arrived, of course, when I had to concede he was an actor, but it didn’t make me love him any less. Far from it. Baker’s Doctor was a glowing presence in my childhood. I learned from him, and his jelly babies, his mischievous grin and his sparkling eyes, that getting older didn’t necessarily mean you had to grow up. That playing, embracing silliness and finding joy in life need never take a back seat to more traditional adult pursuits.
No one ever had more fun, in the entire history of fun, than Tom Baker did while playing the Doctor. Gosh, that inspired me.
Staying up with the creatures of the night
A good night’s sleep is no friend to the nerd. Don’t succumb to its pillowy embrace. Though the physical and psychological benefits of being well rested are, indeed, tremendous, so too are the rewards gained from staying up too late. Can you imagine how much TV you’d miss if you went to bed at a sensible hour? How many comicbooks you’d never know? How few videogames you’d conquer? Exactly.
When I was small, no older than six, and had no say regarding when I’d clock in for my nightly slice of death, staying up late was my favourite treat – one that was usually accompanied by a movie. Though today, I love the access we have to everything, instantly, wherever and whenever we want it, what the digital age has taken from us is the specialness of scheduled programming with no second chances. Back then, if you snoozed, you losed. And the last thing I ever wanted to snooze through was a late-night double bill of Universal Monster Movies.
Sat on the sofa in my dressing gown with the lights down low and my eyes wide as the night sky, I was mesmerised by those vintage chillers, powerless to resist as they filled my living room with misty, dreamlike, bump-in-the-night terrors. Though they wanted to suck my blood, scoop out my brain, feast on my flesh or drag me down to Davy Jones’ Locker, somehow I’d always survive.
To me, they weren’t just movies, then. They were life-affirming experiences. And if that’s not worth losing sleep for, I don’t know what is.
Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I’ve found thee
I was eight years old when Star Wars (1977) enslaved my generation. And by Star Wars I mean the first and finest film in the long-running franchise. The first third of the greatest trilogy ever filmed. The most perfect and personally meaningful movie ever made. The film that, back in the Seventies, we simply called Star Wars. Not Episode IV. Not A New Hope. Just Star Wars. So please, when I say Star Wars, don’t ask me, “Which one?”
Star Wars opened our eyes as to what movies were capable of. Filled our dreams with robots, aliens and space travel. Excited us more than a night alone in Hamleys – “The Most Expensive Toy Store on Earth” – ever could. We wore the t-shirts, hung the posters and played with the action figures, which we tore from their packaging without a second thought and played with until they were worn and clearly loved.
Also, obviously, we returned to the cinema with religious devotion, seeing the movie over and over until we knew every creature by name, the layout of every ship and every line of dialogue – down to R2-D2’s distinctive bleeps and blurps – by heart. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) we likewise dedicated our childhoods to. No disrespect to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but these three films were our Holy Trinity, and man, our faith could move mountains.
In terms of what those movies mean to my generation, I can only equate their impact with such profound, life-changing events as cavemen stumbling across fire for the first time, the invention of grilled cheese sandwiches, and how it must have felt for that audience of naïve 19th-century clucks who, according to urban legend, ran screaming from the screen when the train fast approached them in the Lumière brothers’ plainly titled short film Train Pulling into a Station (1896).
Now you know a bit about me, tell me something about you. What was the film or TV show that cemented your nerdom?
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I was also a kid in the 70s, and it's so hard to convey the impact of seeing Star Wars when it first came out. It was like nothing else. And seeing it in a theater is a whole different experience than watching it on a TV or computer.
Very nice. I saw a bit of myself in the story. Keep it up.