They say you should never meet your heroes - that they won't live up to expectations, that you'll be disappointed. I don't have a clue who 'they' are, but their heroes clearly don't walk around sporting a bright red beard and a gold hat with shiny little mirrors on.
For that is the chosen style of Lee 'Scratch' Perry, a 76-year-old Jamaican music producer, reggae pioneer and one of my heroes. Through his Black Ark Studio in Kingston, Jamaica, Perry produced - in his typically lavish, eccentric style - material from Bob Marley & the Wailers, The Congos, Junior Murvin and Augustus Pablo.
"This is bloody awful! I would never let my kid watch this lol. id make them watch them old school classics, instead of this shit where they cant even teach decent english to young children."
The aforementioned is a stumbled-upon comment of a friend of a friend on Facebook concerning the recently-launched kids' TV show Rastamouse - a charming, upbeat programme that neither terrifies nor patronises children and is based on the premise of "makin' a bad ting good".
