But I don’t want to go to bed yet! 7 – 9pm

You know they’ve been going on about there not being enough homegrown kids stuff on TV? Well I’m home grown. I am. And I’m free range and almost organic except for some antibiotics a vet gave me once for an ear infection. But they didn’t ask for organic children’s television programmes just home grown ones so I think I still fit the bill except The Bill isn’t a children’s programme. But if it were a children’s programme then I’d really fit it.

In fact there are so few homegrown children’s programmes on, that even the children that aren’t home grown have to watch grown up telly. I thought that maybe the grown up telly programmes would like to accommodate their younger viewers and put me in their shows. After all, my ears are gorgeous and don’t need straightening to look fashionable like a beautiful actress’s hair which would have to be a bonus.

Now we’re talking about prime time telly and that should be treated with respect. So I nipped down to the fancy dress shop to see if I could get a decent police uniform to wear. Unfortunately they had a run of office Christmas parties so all the police uniforms had gone. Strangely so had the bunny suits. I was left with the choice of Yasmin from Disney’s Aladdin or a bar of Toblerone. Who goes to a party as a bar of Toblerone? Anyway, not getting the police uniform was an obstacle but I was encouraged to think that if the bunny suits had gone too, then police bunnies was definitely the way to go.

So where else to find a police uniform? How about borrowing one? Now Auntie Jayne warned me that there are laws about impersonating a police officer so I should be very careful. But I’m always careful. After all, children don’t have a second chance on growing up so I don’t want to mess it up for them.

So I skidaddled down to our local nick (see, how I used Bill-like lingo there?) to see if there were any spare ones. Uniforms, not children. The nice man on the desk -I called him Sarge. He didn’t seem to mind although he refused to say

“‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello”

so I could get his accent right and not break any impersonating officer laws. Told you this was going to be difficult.

Anyway the nice man on the desk, ‘Sarge’, said they don’t lend out their uniforms to anyone. Firstly because it confuses the general public and secondly because it confuses them and thirdly because in the past the uniforms have been returned with boiled egg encrusted on the buttons and it’s a devil of a dry-cleaning job. His words not mine.

So if I couldn’t rent one or borrow one, how about making one? I quite like sewing cos I get to make the machine go really fast but once I got excited and it took ages to unpick my ears. What’s that phrase, ‘beg steal or borrow’? It never occurred to me. Instead, I had a brain wave – why not be a plain-clothes officer? All I would have to do is wear what I normally do and I’d just blend in. Perfect.

I was sad not to get to wear the helmet though. So to make up for this disappointment, I decided to be a super sleuthy type of detective and do a lot of sneaking and tiptoeing. It’s a good job I did because the security on the set was far heavier than that at the police station.

But of course what they’re looking out for in prime time telly are gossip-mongering reporters, crazed fans and even more crazed telly executives...

trying to out do each other in their schedules. I saw at least three executives kicked off the set. They scuttled behind the grundon bins but the reporters were already there sifting through the celebrity rubbish. Still it distracted the security people so I was able to sign myself in quite easily as a rising star on the programme’s time sheet at the entrance gate. I filled it in like this Name? KC.
Character? Yes I am quite.
Position? Rising Star.
Time In? Now.
Time out? No thanks; its too early for chocolate.

I presented myself to the director who took one look at my plain clothes officerness and sent me off to wardrobe to get a hoody. I tried to tell him that not every young person wears a hoody but he was too busy filming Stunt-Reg running up the side of a building. That’s the sort of character I want to be: quietly heroic and with my own stunt double, but I’d still do my own stunts because I’d be so heroic.

Anyway, when I got my hoody, I went back to the director and said I was ready for my quietly heroic stunt but he shoved me over with a herd of teenagers who all looked spotty and cold to me but I was told they’d been cast because they had ‘attitude’. They were great fun people but we were treated like a herd. I said I couldn’t remember seeing lots of quietly heroic teenage police detectives in Prime Time telly before and was quite excited at the prospect. Then Ramjam- real name Umar but he apparently gets more work with that stage name, but here called Thug 1 – told me that any action we got to do was smashing things and running away from the police. Thug 3 got paid a bit extra – he had to push an old lady as he ran away from the police.

I was horrified. Firstly young people don’t always push old ladies. In fact I’ve known lots of young people and lots of old ladies and I can’t remember any of them ever doing any pushing or being pushed. Although there is always a certain amount of jostling if a buffet is involved. So I went back to the director and asked why the young people had to always be doing the running away and the pushing and he said it was in the script so I went to the script writers and asked them why the young people had to always be doing the running away and the pushing and she said it was in the story line and I went to the story liners and they said it was in the story and then I ran out of people to go to because all the executives were scuttling behind the bins over on the Eastenders and Coronation Street sets.

Why couldn’t the old ladies do the running away and pushing? Why couldn’t the kids be the detectives? Why do children always have to see themselves as being sulky or criminal and stealing things (like I said, it never occurred to me to nick a police uniform) or just looking like they shop at JD Sports? What about all the other kids who are skateboard champions, practice their recorder and do their granny’s shopping, and don’t wear their trousers round their knees? I have tried and tried and tried to be a proper kids character for proper kids and this was the last straw. I had a bit of a rant at the director. “

No one cares about us kids, not on telly not nowhere. If they did, we’d have places to play and we’d have telly that not only talked to us in our way but showed what we’re really like to the rest of the world too.”

I guess a hopping mad purple bunny was easy to spot because it didn’t take long for the security guys to come out from under the bins (a BBC executive had tucked himself right at the back and they couldn’t reach him) and eject me from the set. Still I’d made my point. I don’t want to be in primetime telly if I have to be an ill-tempered, drug encrusted, teenagely pregnant, loser of a kid. And I got a policeman’s helmet from the stunt-Reg as a souvenir. I shall sell it on ebay and finance my own children’s detective show in which old ladies get to have stunt sequences and television executives do all the running.