I was nine, and I played...
No, don't try to guess. You'll never get it in a million years.

I'll tell you.

Ian McCaskill.

(For the benefit of anyone born after the eighties, he was a weatherman on the BBC.)

My job was to run onto the stage in a woolly jumper and thick glasses, unfurl an enormous weather map of Britain on a piece of paper nearly as high as me, deliver the weather forecast, and run off again.

You've probably realised by now that my school didn't do a traditional Nativity play. In previous years we'd plodded through some variation on the traditional story, but come 1992 it was Mr Killick's turn to write the script.

As with all the best teachers, Mr Killick was slightly eccentric and not one for convention. Out went the choirs singing traditional hymns, to be replaced by a song called "Yule Tidings" sung to the tune of Greased Lightning.

Anyway. My lines as the bespectacled weatherman were, as best as I can recall, to explain that Doctor Who, K9, and for some reason David Bellamy, who at this point were all busy saving Christmas in the Tardis, should wrap up warm as they were going to be battered by the big bad blizzards I was excitedly pointing at on the map.

My attempts to reconcile the recurring encouragements during rehearsals to both (a) try to mimic the gentle whispery voice popularly associated with Mr McCaskill, and (b) speak up so people at the back could hear, resulted in me delivering my lines as if this respected meteorologist had overdosed on speed. Still got an applause, though.

"And that's all from me. Goodnight."

All school Christmas plays should be like that.
(greem, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 22:39, Reply)