A couple of months ago, an old friend posted a photo of himself on Facebook on the occasion of his “Meldrew Point”. When I say old, I’m not referring to his age as such, but to how long I have known him. He is a little older than me, but our ages are certainly quite close. I was intrigued to know more about what he was posting though. What was the Meldrew Point, and is it something I need to be aware of?!
Victor Meldrew (pictured below) was very much a “grumpy old man” style UK sitcom character from the 1990s, starring in One Foot in the Grave. However, Richard Wilson, the actor chosen to play the pensioner character was only 53 years old when the series first aired. Or 19537 days, to be precise. The idea of the “Meldrew Point” came about in order to remind people (some might say cruelly!) of the sudden realisation that as you enter your early fifties, you soon become the same age as the actor playing one of the best known TV old and grumpy characters. A twitter account (@MeldrewPoint) delights in introducing a number of well-known personalities to the concept.
But as I looked further into the idea, I found a dataset of actors’ ages in classic sitcoms through the ages. Having previously had the information only on Richard Wilson, I was able to look into ages of sitcom actors through the years. How old was John Cleese when he played Basil Fawlty (spoiler – younger than you think!). What about Rowan Atkinson’s different guises as Blackadder? Or the brilliant characters played by Leonard Rossiter, Dawn French, Ronnie Barker for example? How old was the actor playing Mrs Doyle in Father Ted?
I could go on – I’ve mentioned often in this blog, and often in interviews, that much of the joy of data visualisation comes in the rabbit-holes it’s possible to run down while investigating the data. And often, a question on a topic you may genuinely never have even heard of before (for example, what are Grandsire Doubles?) is best answered by a data visualisation. A google, or a verbal description, can take you some of the way, but there can be so much more pleasure derived from a dive into a visual representation. A simple question can be such a good prompt for a visualisation project, even, in my personal case, to break quite a long slump of inaction. The source of such a question might surprise you, but if you use your curiosity to answer that question visually, we have, as data visualisation designers, the perfect opportunity to do this for ourselves. My audience, when initially creating visualisations about Grandsire Doubles, or Meldrew Points, to start with, is me. But I can then derive extra pleasure, and extra value from the time it takes me to create something, by subsequently expanding that audience to anyone who is interested. Hopefully in such an engaging and viscerally interesting way that it achieves that aim, too.
I chose a Lexis chart for my visualisation. It’s a particular favourite chart type, but apart from its viscerally pleasing parallel diagonal lines throughout, it’s a genuine good fit for this data as we intercept a particular age (whether it be the Meldrew Point, our own age, or any other point we are interested in) with the timeline of a particular actor and character. I’ve written more about Lexis charts in a number of places, such as here and here. This version is restricted to just sixteen shows, but more are available within the dataset should anyone wish to download and explore from Tableau Public. I’ve also chosen to add some interactivity to the online version, so as to widen the scope of interest a little further than a bunch of Gen-X British people, and to allow for a whole load of new definition points: the Fawlty Point? The Crilly Point? The Ollerenshaw Point?
It’s interesting to see well-known people approach their Meldrew Points, in the knowledge that my own is not far off! As I write, the latest to celebrate the milestone was DJ Zoe Ball earlier this week, hot on the heels of the likes of Kylie Minogue, Jennifer Aniston and Sir Matthew Pinsent. If you didn’t already know about it, hopefully my visualisation helps you embrace it with good humour, in much the same way that my friend Paul did.
As for me, my Meldrew Point is approaching, but it turns out my Peacock Point is closer. Frank Thornton was only fractionally older than me when he first played Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served. If you enjoyed this post, or the accompanying viz (on Tableau Public at https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/neil.richards/viz/meldrew/MeldrewPoint) – let me know which milestones you are approaching!
Questions in Dataviz 