My favourite childhood outfit: ‘Batman is one of my finest looks ever – I’d use this on my passport, if I could’

It was Christmas, and my father introduced me and my brother to the gathered family as Batman and Robin. We kept wearing the disguise for a week

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.