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I am recording five RHLSTP Book Clubs in the next fortnight and have a lot of reading to do. I've been very much enjoying Reece Shearsmith's forthcoming "Things I Took From The Dark", his look back at his childhood and the monsters and stories that inspired his comedy. In all honesty if you were told this was a book about the inspirations of a future serial killer you would probably believe it. So all in all it's good that Reece chose to go into comedy, rather than murder. Unless he's secretly doing both.
I like the tale of a seemingly cursed grinning skull that he won at a fairground which he christened the Mermit, a name he describes as arriving fully formed. It was his favourite toy but eventually he lost track of it, but lots of minor disasters happened to the family during this time - was the Mermit to blame?
Could the Mermit be any more Reece Shearsmith? Which came first the Mermit or his crazed brain?
Personally I think we come out of the womb with our personalities pretty fully formed and Reece was always going to be Reece and that's why the Mermit appealed to him.
My own favourite childhood toy sums me up in a way that the Mermit encapsulates Reece. I had an orange space hopper (remember those grandad?)- for younger readers, it was a big bouncy ball with handles that looked like long weird ears and you could bounce round the garden (or house if you wanted to break stuff) sitting on it and holding on to its penile pinnas.
I don't know why they were called space hoppers. You never got more than a few inches off the ground and there was no astronaut or star or planet theme. They were just orange balls with a Mutley style face drawn on it (remember him grandad?)
Like the Mermit, my spacehopper had a name that arrived fully formed - I called him Boono. Where did that come from? From the same mysterious well of names as the Mermit - some alien force is projecting them into kids' heads.
Again, just as you'd expect Shearsmith junior to love a cursed, gurning skull, you'd expect tiny Herring to be in love with a massive orange ball that he could bounce around on. Our personalities drawing us to the things we'd obsess over, rather than the other way round.
Would these two very different kids have been friends if they'd met? I think they probably would. Both weirdos in our own ways. Totally different breeds of dog that would recognise they were the same species.
I don't know what happened to Boono either. The last time I remember seeing him was in a little shed in my parents' garden. I suspect when he'd lain there for a couple of years unused that my dad had stabbed him to death with a garden fork and chucked him in the bin. But I hope he somehow escaped and bounced free and maybe found some other exuberant child who he'd help tire out by allowing them to think they were being bounced around, when in fact it was them doing all the work.
Talking of exuberant children, Hahayourbuttsmells is back for more, on
today's Newsround (don't worry, he's back to school soon) plus some other crazy new characters.
