Robin of Sherwood, and Uma Thurman (is the BFG)

Michael Praed, Robin of Sherwood

It’s been ages since I’ve had cause to visit the post office, and here in Tolly Maw it also fulfils the role of strange corner shop. You can’t buy a newspaper but you can buy magazines, albeit none that you’d want to, and honestly even here I cannot imagine who would. No one clearly, as if any of them are dust collector periodicals then there’s a hell of a free gift on the cover. You can buy turnips but not potatoes, waffles but not chips. There’s an indeterminate chop but no bacon, and though there is rack upon rack of sweets they’re all liquorice. And of course a little counter where set a yard back from the sill is our post master. Our post master is Michael Praed who once robbed from the rich with the eyes of a puppy , pictures above in the defining role as Robin of Sherwood.

Now and way back then we would all tumble hurriedly into my then Bromley flat to watch Robin of Sherwood (and to begin with quite possibly in black and white). Cheap though it was then still it knocks spots off absolutely every other version that has followed it. Even the one where Uma Thurman disguises herself as a man by the simple expedient of showing everyone her giant hands and collosal, flapping feet. The tabloid press seethed at the first series by oddly showing again, and again the same picture of Robin and Marian sharing the first lesbian kiss in a mainstream show on British terrestrial television. We loved its heroics, the stories, and Ray Winstone scowling his way through script after script without either, a) shooters, or b) motors.

Praed’s career moved on after RoS, through playing a feminine Prince in Robin of Dynasty. He played Beth in Robin of Brookside. In Stephen Poliakoff’s The Tribe, Praed courted further controversy by taking part in a threesome with just Jonathan Rhys Myers and himself.

And now here, our post master – and in a cage. He can only serve women when dressed in a one-piece rhino-hide biotoxin suit. He has to hand them any change with big, wooden washing tongs. Getting on as he is then whilst he no longer has to worry about getting pregnant any woman that watches Robin of Sherwood, still he has to be very careful being in the same room as them. He’s currently being hassled by Matt Groening after Praed watched Futurama and got Leela with twins – and she's a cartoon.

I asked about Guy of Gisborne, for a laugh. Turns out lung cancer got him in 2003. I didn’t know and I still feel sad now hearing of it. So perhaps it’s fitting to show a picture of Guy too, it might help the fact that having looked at the picture at the top of this article – you’re now pregnant.

Yeah, you are.

Malfoy?