When did you first realise that Mr Blobby was legitimately terrifying?
If you're like me - and given the LADbible demographic, that's statistically likely - then you probably grew up with the pink polka dot behemoth as a figure of fun, a chaotic morass of comedy pratfalls, tipping sets over and causing mayhem on your Saturday teatime television.
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The brainchild of BBC comedy writer Charlie Adams, he was an all-conquering pop culture sensation in the 90s, emerging unexpectedly from Noel's House Party to rule the pop charts and beyond, before settling as the zany stag weekend's fancy dress costume du jour.
That electronically altered voice was frightening: remember, in the 90s, we had never heard of autotune and the glory of 'Believe' by Cher was still a few years away. He sounded like a marshmallow that had swallowed a CD player. His frozen smiling face was a warped grotesque cut into a Tunnock's teacake.
It's easy to forget what a genuine cultural phenomenon Blobby was. Noel's House Party was watched by 15 million people a week, while Blobby had a Christmas number one single and even a string of theme parks. (Incidentally, my Dad tried to take us to the Noel/Blobby-themed land of Crinkly Bottom at Happy Mount Park in Morecambe. It was shuttered).
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He provoked an column in the New York Times, critiquing his effect on popular culture, which read: "Mr. Blobby's rise to stardom has provoked anguished commentaries about just what he stands for... Some commentators have called him a metaphor for a nation gone soft in the head. Others have seen him as proof of Britain's deep-seated attraction to trash."
Trash he was, and terrifying he was too. By 1999, though, Noel's House Party was almost done. When it died, Blobby all but died with it - a character so 90s that he couldn't survive the Millenium. .
For me, it all fell apart during a day of family fun at a Catholic church hall in Rochdale in 1995. Someone had bought a Mr Blobby costume and thought it would be hilarious to run into the church hall wearing it, causing the requisite amount of pandemonium and enthralling the kids along the way. Of course, things did not pan out like that.
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As he ran into the room, our Rochdale Blobby (which might, in a fairer world, have been Cyril Smith's nickname) tripped over something, falling flat on his Blobby face. As the head rolled off the suit, revealing that the man whom I had previously assumed to be Mr Blobby was, in fact, Gary from three doors down who played in goal for my Dad's five-a-side team.
It was as if I'd been told that Santa wasn't real, right in front of everyone I knew.
Clearly the man inside the Blobby suit on Noel's House Party was a more capable performer than our Gary- or at least, tended not to take to the stage with several pints of John Willie Lees in his bloodstream. All of a sudden, the character collapsed for me. Instead of chaotic fun, Blobby became intensely annoying.
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Though he gets wheeled out from time to time for nostalgia purposes, most people's reaction is generally the same: why was this ever popular? And how was he ever allowed near kids?
Surely we're all a little scarred by the memory.
Featured Image Credit: BBC / Noel's House PartyTopics: TV and Film, UK Entertainment, Nostalgia