Lock Keepers Cottage, Old Ford Lock. I once gazed at this building through the bleary eyes of a teenager late for school. I went without food, because The Big Breakfast was all the sustinance that I needed.
This is the house where Evans made his fame. How I loved his ginger-faced banter. For Rosalind, Tarbuck and Ball this building was a font of creativity. Vaughn set the standards, and the tears of laughter did flow. Alas those tears have long-since dried.
Those once rosy bricks are now stained with the black pessimism of the grimy east-end. The sound of laughter resounds no more. Dog-walkers bussle on in an embarrased silence. There are no gurning children, celebrity chefs or pop-stars; the great and the poor are are excluded by mesh and razor-wire.
Oh, would that the languid waters rise up and wash away this misery!
I remember being a teenager in the 80’s waking up to the red lit night streets of northern ireland and northern england to see bomb explodings and miners strikes as a wake up before school on TVAM and BBC Breakfast. Depressing. Then one wonderful morning my screen, my house and my life were filled with a beautiful radiance as the perfect format for a breakfast show was launched.
I remember being so happy that this beautiful invention was everything the country needed but also felt sad as I knew one day it would end and this perfect invention could never be replaced or bettered.
I would laugh and watch in amazement as edition to edition, year on year the show would remain fresh and innovative. But by the end the show was tired, this breakfast was stale and the talent, well, was not talent at all, just a collective of pretty wannabe’s and so the spirit, the laughter and the energy of what made a seeminly unstoppable wall of fun had now crumbled for the sake of some badly chosen revamps, incompetent producers and wannabe presenters who collectively robbed us of a wonderful privilege, something that made us proud and lucky to have this wonderful invention tarnished, broken and retired for the sake of their egos.
When they handed Richard Bacon his hat, he should of left rather than keeping his foot in the door and destroying a show for his own selfish career needs.