Terry and June ... and John

My home town of Croydon was celebrated in the initial 1979 title sequence of the ultimate suburban sitcom, Terry and June. In the titles, Terry arrives at the old East Croydon Station, with Richard Seifert's Thrupenny Bit building in the background, and June's stuck round the corner at the Fairfield Halls. Next June is on the escalator in the original Whitgift Centre ('classic' if you will), feet away from Webster's bookshop where I used to work, while Terry is skittering along a balcony behind her. This illustrates the sitcom perfectly: they have arranged to do something dull and uncontroversial, to meet in the town centre, but are waiting in entirely different places. And then, instead of waiting, as any normal person would do, they both run off to completely different parts of town with absolutely no motive, 'just in case'.

It's amazing to me that Croydon's concrete town centre could be such a cosy sitcom signifier, but then little about Terry and June was explicable. If you're from Cumbernauld you have Gregory's Girl and Cumbernauld Hit. If you're from Tyneside you have Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads and Get Carter. If you're from Birmingham you have Take Me High and Telly Savalas. Well, I'm from Croydon and I have Terry and June, so I win.