David Brown the Weatherman is Not My Boyfriend

It’s true. Unfortunately, he isn’t.

He is and will always be, however, the first celebrity I ever met and YES, ‘celebrity’ is the right word, thank you.

The year was 1994, Grade Six at St Albans South Primary School. The location: the General Purpose Room (or, as we kids all liked to refer to it, the “GP” room). David Brown the Weatherman from Channel 7 was giving us a talk on “meteorology” (or, as we all liked to refer to it, “the weather“). Did you know David Brown is the only TV weatherman who’s actually a qualified meteorologist?

I knew that.

Because he told me.

Well, he told all of Grade 6T and Grade 6M.

To this day, I don’t know how a humble public school from the western suburbs of Melbourne managed to pull a star like David Brown the Weatherman.

We hadn’t had a celeb in to give a talk since Grade Two when Michael Salmon came to read aloud from “The Monster That Ate Canberra”, "Grunt Goes to School", “and Who’s Behind the Door at the Zoo”. And I’m pretty sure that was at a different school.

I guess there was also our emergency teacher, Mr Gardiner, who was once a contestant on Sale of the Century... But every school in the west met him because he subbed everywhere - and he whored himself around to all the game shows anyway so we were all like, "Whatever, Mr Gardiner. Come back when you've won the car." And he was like, "People didn't start saying whatever till the late 90s." And we were like "fine; rack off."

And he didn’t give a special talk; he just did yard duty a lot.

At 12, I knew very well that David Brown the Weatherman was handsome. I'd already been in love with Jason Priestley a.k.a Brandon from Beverly Hills 90210 since I was 10 and I had the doll and a copy of the "Just Jason" novella to prove it.

David Brown was TV-handsome AND real-life handsome. He had that Prince-Eric-from-the-Little-Mermaid thing going on, which to a 12-year-old-in-the-90s, was essentially Brad Pitt. And yes, it can be confirmed I have crushes on animated men. That is some penmanship, Disney.

After David Brown's meteorology talk, of which I remember something vague about cold fronts, and something else vague about a blue screen, he let us all go up to him and shake his hand and say hello. Then, he handed each one of us a Channel 7 News bumper sticker, and an autographed picture of Jennifer Keyte.

There was not one Grade Six kid that didn't think that was friggin' awesome. (Or, as we liked to call it then, "grouse".) And we'd just lived through New Kids on the Block chewing gum collector cards.

I went home and watched the weather on the TV that night (even though I never ever watched the news) and pointed him out to my mum even though she could tell who he was on her own, and then I showed her my Channel 7 sticker and Jennifer Keyte signed picture again and she was as enthused as she was the first time I showed her.

Even now, when I tell her, "I met Pink", or I met "Home & Away's Alf", or I met "INXS", she's like, "Okay."
(All right, I'll pay her disinterest on that last one - meeting INXS minus the dead one so doesn't count.)

I confessed my thing for David Brown the Weather Man to one of my colleagues and she said she didn't think I should be going around admitting things like that. Well, why would they cast attractive weather-people if we weren't suppposed to like them? As if Livinia isn't appealing to the bi-curious.

I can kind of see my colleague's point. When I see David Brown on the Channel 7 news, I can’t help but be aware that he is Not My Boyfriend, and can never be, on account of he met me when I was 12 and that would be creepy.

And also because according to the final paragraph of his bio, he is married, which makes this whole entire post creepy.

Whatever. As if I'm serious!