"Favourite fruit?"
Pink Grapefruit.
"Why?"
Because it's bitter and gay.
I think I may have just failed the 'What Fruit Denotes Your Personality Test?' and I haven't even got to the part where I start unpeeling a banana.
As a teenager I spent an inordinate amount of time flicking through any magazine I could find doing 'Personality Tests'. My being a child of the 1980's meant that I could easily spend a morning applying my brain to the question 'Are You More Like Madonna, Boy George or Michael Jackson?' in a (well thumbed) copy of 'Smash Hits', or even a whole afternoon contemplating 'What Will Bring You To Orgasm' in my mothers (well fingered) copy of 'Cosmopolitan' and sometimes, if I was feeling especially adventurous, a matter of minutes wondering 'How Big Is Your Penis?' in my fathers (well hung?) copy of 'Playboy'.
The amount of time I spent on theses quizzes would have been better applied to schoolwork but I was hungry to experience the outside world, and without the lacy gloves and hairy armpits (at that time) to be like Madonna, the know how to reach orgasm or the experience to realise it's all about the girth, I satisfied my insecurities and admonished my teenage doubts with the help of a Bic biro and a library of Freudian quotes.
My personality was 1/4 Vogue, 1/2 True Crime Stories and 1/4 Fisherman's Weekly.
I was a heady mix and my whole life became consumed by spouting self help jargon, finding out what colour underwear would lead me to success and asking myself the imposing question, could I really 'Pull Off A Perm'.
Now as a fully grown and self aware adult, whenever I see a copy of 'Psychology' magazine asking me to 'Find my Tribe' or 'How To Tell If They Are A Close Friend or Acquaintance', I wonder what my teenage reaction to those quizzes would have been? I was never susceptible to peer pressure, but sit me down with a copy of 'Womans Weekly' and I would have self diagnosed a lipstick allergy, found my true career to be a cinema usherette and reasoned the fact that I chewed gum and went to the bathroom twice a day would result in my having three children with a man named Bryan.
My formative years were shaped and molded by Helen Gurley Brown and a dire need to find out if I could be 'Rich, Sexy or Famous?'
Personality tests are used to filter the serial killer from the shopgirl, the transparent from the transvestite and the popstar from the pervert. I still get that incredible feeling of excitement if I go for a job interview and they ask me to fill out a multiple choice questionnaire to deem if I'm worthy of working for them. Of course, there are only ever two answers to those tests of personality, you either get the job or you don't. There is never a 'you are borderline efficient with a photocopier and have an unnerving talent for taking lunch breaks' or even 'you're a hungover on a Wednesday, phone in sick on a Monday kind of guy' so it's at these times I'd advise going straight home and googling 'Work Personality Test'.
There's bound to be something that tells you if you're 'Too Much of a Sociopath For Selfridges' or 'Too Bi-polar for Barclays'.
At the present time, I'm trying to stay away from anything that tells me my personality by way of analysing how I peel a carrot, how I tie my shoelaces or how I toss my pancakes and I'm dealing with any life choice in a much more adult way.
With lies, self-delusion and a tear stained copy of 'Cosmopolitan' or 'True Crime Weekly'.