Naptime Five Hundred #1: Samantha Seager

You probably don’t know who Samantha Seager is, do you.

Get a grip.

No, don’t google her. I’ll tell you in a bit. But first I’ll explain the premise of the Nap Time Five Hundred. In the two hours of my daughter’s midday nap, I am devoting half an hour to the jobs my wife left (“clean kitchen floor” ; “iron tea towels” ; “endorse direct bilateral negotiations between Israel and Palestine”) and the remaining ninety minutes to spewing exactly five hundred words of my brain on to Microsoft Word.

Anyway, Samantha Seager. She’s just surfaced on Britain’s Favourite Soap as Jodie Morton, daughter of the bloke who used to be Sinbad in Brookside.

I was chuffed to see Samantha on Corrie, for I, the wife, and the bairn know her best for her jaunty portrayal of Bobbie in CBeebies offering Me Too. I always thought Samantha was by far the most talented of that ensemble cast, and it surprises me not in the least she’s hit the big time.

Me Too, for the uninitiated, is the less famous urban sister of Balamory. The setting is downtown Riverseafingal and its aim is supposedly to reassure infants that their parents think about them when they’re at work – a message that went over this thirty-two year old’s head, so how many four-year-olds got this, I wouldn’t like to say.

Samantha’s Bobbie is a contemporary working-class hero. She’s a chavvy northern single mum many Daily-Mail readers would expect to be hibernating on benefits. But no, she pays for (what looks like pricey) daycare out of the miserly sum she draws in scrubbing buses at the crack of dawn. How much net can she be in pocket for bothering to work? A tenner?

Yet somehow, Bobbie resists the temptation to play the martyr or wallow in self pity. Her lust for life and work is heart-roasting. She makes me proud to be of proletariat stock. When she sings On My Way To Work – which extols the virtues of being en-route-a-pied to a hard day’s yacker – she means it so much more than the other mediocre luvvies making up the numbers. The cartwheel Bobbie throws as she approaches the depot raises the neck hair. It’s so unexpected. And, slickly, she falls back into her consonant strut, perma-grin still beaming at the camera. Sigh.

I’m delighted for Bobbie to be a role model for my daughter. These days, a job which involves dorkily prancing around and constipatedly gurning in risible clothes is seen as “high status”, whereas getting your hands dirty for an essential, punishing day’s graft is sniffed at. I’d sooner my daughter turn out more Bobbie than Kate Moss.

More power to your cartwheeling arms, Samantha. And I suppose it’s goodbye to Bobbie. Surely we won’t see her again if Samantha becomes part of the furniture in Weatherfield. Accordingly, in anticipation, I mourn.

So, farewell Bobbie. As the buses of Riverseafingal will gleam a little less, so will the days of many stay-at-home parents.

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