One of my
favourite moments of last Thursday’s show was revealing Jim Bowen was 44 in
this picture for a guy at the back to shout, “Fuck off’.
It’s easily the
best reaction the photo has ever had as it perfectly mirrors what I thought
when I first discovered it. It’s shocking enough to want to trace Bowen’s birth
certificate in case he’d been rounding down his age considerably or had a
similar ever-present existence to Pennywise from Stephen King’s It.
If Bowen was
genuinely in his early-to-mid forties he must have seen some truly terrible
things in his lifetime akin to what Winston saw in Ghostbusters II; that or he
never troubled his local chemist in search of moisturizer. I don’t mean to cast
judgment so much as register my disbelief; you could add twenty years to his
age without flinching.
I can only hope
that when I reach Bowen’s age in seven years I won’t look as old as him; it’s
not too much to ask for, is it? I keep myself relatively fit and have only a few
grey hairs to speak of, so surely things couldn’t escalate so much; maybe if
hairspray my face daily it will preserve it. Anything’s worth a go.