It is a truth universally acknowledged that teenage boys are obsessed with wanking.

I was obsessed with two things: wanking and watching The Magic Roundabout.

The Magic Roundabout is a kid's TV show that originally aired from 1965 to 1977. It features Dougal the dog, a jack-in-the-box called Zebedee, Ambroise the snail, Ermintrude the cow, and Dylan the rabbit. They all dick around together in a surreal forest called The Magic Garden. There was also the eponymous roundabout, which wasn't the kind you drive a car around, but the fairground kind instead.

I had never actually seen any episodes of the Magic Roundabout but I really wanted to watch an episode. Just one episode would do.

The show's appeal

The main appeal of the show, for me, was its look. The land of The Magic Roundabout is white all around, except for a few trees, which are two-dimensional and made of card. Each tree is just one colour, red or blue or pink. For some reason, this simple aesthetic really appealed to me, and the trees especially were one of the reasons I wanted to watch it so much.

The show was created by a Frenchman called Serge Danot, which might explain the surreal imagery and why Zebadee has such a big moustache. Danot named the forest the Bois Joli (the Pretty Wood), which has nothing to do with Dom Joly, the comedian. I wanted to visit the Bois Joli, even though, in my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn't a real place.

I also liked the mood of The Magic Roundabout. It was soft and calm. There were no guns or explosions. If you watch The Magic Roundabout long enough, which you couldn't back in those days because it was only on at 5:44 AM, then I reckon you would achieve a state of nirvana and new wonders of the universe would be opened up to you.

The Magic Roundabout came from a time when TV for kids was surreal and easygoing and was made with stop-motion or puppets instead of CGI. Maybe that was part of the appeal for me. The Magic Roundabout was a show from an earlier time, a more innocent time, a time before ninja turtles stabbing each other in the eyes with nunchuks or pokemon setting each other on fire. Instead, it was just a dog called Dougal, a jack-in-the-box called Zebedee, the rest of their friends and a fairground roundabout.

I wanted to watch the Magic Roundabout but this was 2001 and YouTube hadn't been invented yet. My only chance of watching it was to catch it on TV, but it only came on at 5:45 in the morning. I could never figure out how to make myself wake up at 5:30 AM, which was the time the Magic Roundabout was shown. I would always wake up around 8 AM by which time the Magic Roundabout would be over.

I guess I could have programmed my Bart Simpson alarm clock to wake me up but it would have woken up my family too, with its cries of "HEY MAN, GET UP AND GET OUT OF BED." If you didn't turn it off, it would say, "HEY MAN, AREN'T YOU OUT OF BED YET?" The Bart Simpson alarm clock only had two volume settings: 1) Very Loud and 2) Off. Whoever invented the Bart Simpson alarm clock was probably a twat and/or deaf.

Thinking about it, who was watching The Magic Roundabout at five in the morning? It must have either been parents who were woken early by their kids or students who had just come home from a night of partying and whose minds were so addled by the drugs that the Magic Roundabout was all they could understand. I can't imagine how many people must have sat in the whitish glow of the television in the early morning, rocking back and forth, trying to distract themselves from the drug-induced monsters banging on the door and windows on their living rooms by trying to focus on the adventures of Dougal and Zebedee instead.

My only other option was to set the VCR to come on automatically at 5:45, record The Magic Roundabout, and then turn itself off again. Then I could watch the recording whenever I wanted.

However, I didn’t know how to set the timer on the VCR. I think my dad knew, and I could have asked for his help, but I didn't want him to find out that his fourteen-year-old son was obsessed with The Magic Roundabout. If he had ever found out, he would have shaken his head at me with disgust and wondered whether he would have to wait until I was sixteen or whether he could disown me right there and then.

Learning to set the VCR myself was out of the question too. VCRs were notoriously difficult to program. Imagine trying to set an alarm on an alarm clock, except instead of three buttons there are twenty, as well as a remote control that has fifty more buttons. Also, imagine that the VCR's only way of communicating with you is by displaying letters in calculator font instead of a proper font, and it only displays five letters at a time. Then you will get close to understanding the difficulties of programming a VCR.

It had taken a lot of effort for my dad to learn how to set the VCR and it had taken a toll on his mental health. Even today, if you say the words "set the VCR" to him then his face will turn white and he will scream until someone injects him with a tranquillizer. It's why we have to keep him heavily sedated in a care home.

I never did learn how to program the VCR. So it was with great longing every week I saw The Magic Roundabout in the TV listings, so close and yet so far. All I wanted to see was one episode. Just one. All I had seen so far were just glimpses, glimpses of some magical other world, albeit a world that was a kids' TV show, and I longed to see more, like how Moana wants to see what's beyond her island.

In the end, I never did get to watch The Magic Roundabout, or at least, not at that point in my life. The first time I saw an episode was as an adult, through YouTube. And I thought, is this what I wanted to watch so badly? It was a bigger letdown than Star Wars Episode One. I think I missed the critical period for enjoying The Magic Roundabout. For most people, that point is the age of three. For me, it was the age of 14. I will never get back the opportunity to enjoy The Magic Roundabout and for this, I blame Channel 4 for putting it on so early. So fuck you, Channel 4.

Anyway, I can't be arsed to write any more so goodbye.