Continuing our The Best Thing-themed series celebrating growing up, the Vamos team share some of their childhood secrets with us. This week it's the turn of our set and costume designer, Carl Davies, and actor Richard J Fletcher
The Best Thing about me is....
Richard: Despite a somewhat unorthodox lifestyle, I’ve managed to father two amazing girls who fill me with amazement, laughter and pride!
Carl: That I can quite comfortably talk to strangers and have a jolly good time doing so.
What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
Richard: 16 years old. Bo Derek and Saturday mornings surrounded by older girls at dancing class were the problem.
Carl: I wanted to have my very own puppet show as ventriloquist artist.
What was the first single you bought? And in what format?
Richard: “Crazy little thing called Love”, with “We Will Rock You” on the B side. (Vinyl from Woolworths 1980)
Carl: The first single I think I bought was a tape: "Here comes the Hotstepper" by Ini Kamoze.
What was your most cringe worthy childhood outfit?
Richard: From the age of three I was sent with my big sister to dance class as my dad reckoned it would improve my balance and football skills, and it did but at a cost! There are photos of me at a ballet exam in very tight blue shorts and a skin tight ballet vest. I just wanted to wear my City kit!
Carl: Bright orange plaid dungarees, or was it the patchwork baggy trousers I'm really not sure, but they lasted a good few years!!! Jesus....
What were you most scared of as a child?
Richard: I had a friend whose dad had a collection of horror movies on vhs but we watched them so many times they stopped scaring us. I grew up in quite a rural place so in the summer holidays me and my mates would go off adventuring, and one day we came across an old derelict church near Hartshead Pike. Inside the walls were covered in “Devil Worship” nonsense we’d seen in the horror films! We ran screaming across the fields!
Carl: Walking up the stairs in the dark or falling asleep after everyone else.
What was your favourite childhood holiday?
Richard: One of my earliest memories is getting in from school one day and answering the telephone. It was granddad and all he said was, “How do you fancy going to Disneyworld?” Nuff said!
Carl: I remember going to Sunderland and saw the bright lights and picking up all the glass washed up on the sand that was a pretty awesome holiday.
The Best Thing about me as a child was...
Richard: My smile! I lost my front baby teeth whilst still a toddler and had to wait till I was 9 for the proper ones to grow. I had fangs and a speech defect!
Carl: That I survived.