What I love about this photo is that it couldn’t look any more early 80s if it tried. Everything from the velvet curtains to the plastic flowers, the old-school cathode-ray tube TV to the MK1 metallic purple Ford Escort just in view (the one in which I would later learn to drive), screams 1981. Pictured, we have Pandy the bear; my younger brother Jon, five; Sooty; and yours truly, aged seven, all of us covering a variety of skin and hair colours between us. (Like all the best superheroes, I’m adopted.) The photo would have been taken by my dad using his Kodak camera with flash cube, sporting bell-bottomed jeans and sideburns, while my mum, with her beehive haircut, sipping a Babycham, would probably have been on hand for moral support.
These outfits were made by our gran (my mum’s mum), who was as much a whiz with the sewing machine and a knitting needle as she was with a wooden spoon, and would make us outfits for birthdays and Christmases, as well as baking us a seemingly never-ending supply of chocolate cake. This photo would have been taken at a time when the unwritten rules of being an older brother had already been established. I got the top bunk – because I’m oldest. I got the biggest slice – because I’m oldest. I got to sit in the front seat – because I’m oldest. I’m Batman and you’re Robin – because I’m oldest. Although thinking about it, an R for Richard on my chest would have been more fitting.
Pandy and Sooty later received their own knitted Batman and Robin costumes (Sooty got to be Batman, because he’s the oldest). Dressed as a seven-year-old superhero, this has to be one of my finest looks to date. I’d use it as my passport photo and Guardian byline pic, if I could.
The fir tree on the coffee table indicates it’s Christmas. I specifically remember going upstairs to change, coming back down, and my dad introducing the gathered family to Batman and Robin. “Where have Rich and Jon gone?” everyone clearly wondered. I don’t think we came out of disguise for the whole of Christmas Day, then Boxing Day and the rest of the week, by which time our outfits would have been covered in gravy, Christmas pudding and – yes – Gran’s chocolate cake.
This was almost a decade before Michael Keaton’s moody Batman, and – yikes! – almost 30 years before Christian Bale’s even moodier The Dark Knight. Our outfits are modelled on the 1960s Adam West and Burt Ward “Wham! Ker-pow! Ker-splunk!” Batman, which we’d watch with my dad in the 70s and 80s. Personally, I think I’ve nailed the camp humour of the original, although I don’t remember Batman wearing brown flannel trousers like mine – at least, not for any of his public appearances. It might have been a bit much to have expected my gran to knit Batman’s yellow utility belt and Robin’s oversized green underpants, too. Although, I’m sure, if we’d asked, she would have given it her best superhero shot.
