Badges have got me in a Tivvy

WAS anyone else in the Tivvy Club? Tivvy was a strange, Afro-haired gonk who was a bare-faced marketing ploy aimed at children by the TV Times magazine in the 1960s.

I joined his club and got a badge for my trouble, a badge which I wore with pride until somebody mangled it.

I also had some BB badges, which proved to the world that, not only could I sew on a button, but I had learned semaphore using two large flags in my small bedroom.

Later, I wore a badge that said “Librarian” which entitled me to skive off to the school library, which was nice.

But since then I have never worn a badge of any description for the very good and obvious reason that badges are for children, who haven’t yet constructed an identity of their own.

I don’t mean badges of rank, obviously, because without them nobody in uniform would know who anybody else was or what to do with their hands when they met them.

But lapel badges that send out messages about the type of person

Badges are, strangely enough, popular among politicians

you think you are... they’re odd in an adult.

They are, strangely enough, very popular among politicians, I note.

Americans from the president down now have to wear a wee enamel stars and stripes on their lapel, possibly just to reassure people they’re not Russian. Although isn’t that the first thing a Russian would do? Cunning devils.

Our own health secretary wears a badge that says NHS, maybe in the hope that paramedics won’t ignore him if he’s in a crash.

Alex Salmond is rarely without his enamel saltire on his jaiket – as if we were in any doubt about who he supported. And there are now variations on the political philosophy theme – saltires linked with EU flags or union jacks with EU flags (I’ve only seen Willie Rennie wearing this one, but I’m sure there must be others).

As I say, all very childish. But it does lead to one very grown-up question. Who owns the lapel badge franchise? The things never used to exist so someone must have created a demand and become fabulously wealthy.

I’d like to join their club.