Sweets, teeth and wizards
When I was in infant school, I and a girl who sat on the same table were picked out of class one day and taken to the headmistress' office.

Someone - I assume it was Staffordshire County Council Education department, but it could have been the Department of Health or Orson Welles for all I know - wanted to make an educational film about sweets and tooth decay. K - the girl from my class - and I were to feature in it.

We were taken to the sweet shop around the corner, where we were filmed spending our supposed pocket money on whatever confectionary was large and luridly-coloured enough to be picked up by the camera, and then we were filmed from across the leaving the shop. Then we had to drop a sweet.

That was it.

Shortly afterwards, we were shown the film. I have a dim memory of a sickly and miserable-looking me (I was a very pale child) leaving the shop and dropping something. The film then turned into a sort of plasticine animation thing about - I think - a wizard who lived down the drains, found the dropped sweet and... well, I don't know. I simply can't remember.

But if, in the early 1980s, you were shown a film about sweets, teeth and wizards, then you probably saw a film starring me.

And no, we didn't get to keep the sweets from the filming session. The magic of TV is that a lot of it is made up.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 11 Jun 2009, 15:29, Reply)