On Colour

Hello There

Those of you who remember my television appearances and who were fortunate to be able to view them in colour will know that I adopt a sober approach to the chromatic aberrations with which others make a spectacle of themselves these days. Grey, taupe, beige and oatmeal form my sartorial palette: I find that any garishness in my visual presentation will clash inordinately with the brilliance of the message I intend to impart*.

Yet whereas I prefer to eschew colour per se, its role is imperative to the world in which we live. Insects scream “I am (or could be) dangerous! Don’t touch (or eat) me!”. Flowers cry “Look at me! Help me procreate! Come inside and have a rummage around”. Attraction, distraction and the imparting of information: life uses colour in the interests of self-preservation and promotion, much as society has adopted it too.

But what precisely IS colour, and do you see the same colour as me? We know that the top traffic light is red, but is your red the same as mine? Would I find yours at the top? As we are all trichromatic primates, if I was to be given a direct feed into your optical nerve one would assume that whatever identifies red in your eye would identify the same red in mine… but what if I have more of them than you do, as I probably have? What happens if you have an eye-transplant? Would your new perceived blue be the same as your previously perceived blue? And does it matter?

At times like this I need to sit down in a darkened room because, if it does matter, I worry that none of us has ever worried about it mattering. I simultaneously see red, feel blue and am green with envy - but , again, are my red, blue and green the same as yours? And do you see what I mean?

This question leads on to others. I might hear you say “I dream in colour”. Do you? Or do you just perceive your dreams to be in colour? And if the optic nerve is responsible for bringing colour information to the brain from the eye, and our eyes are closed when we dream, where are these colours coming from? As everything in our dreams is a fabrication or reconstruction of memory, then those colours must be those we have already experienced. I think we have already agreed that these colours may not be the same for each of us.

So Protanopia, Deuteranopia and Tritanopia sufferers will therefore rejoice at my latest campaign to have the television licence fee reduced incrementally for colour-blindness sufferers. Full colour licences are currently £145.50, and black and white licences £49 per annum. Viewers with colour blindness will be required to take a simple test, fill in the purple form and return it in the turquoise envelope to obtain a discount. Any shortfall in revenue to the licensing authorities would be made up by a £50 surcharge for people who insist in watching their televisions on that dreadful ‘vivid’ setting.

Personally, I dream in oatmeal.

With warmest regards

Vernon Thornycroft


*There will be those of you who recall me wearing a lurid ‘day-glo’ orange Terylene tie during my television appearance analysing contemporary music as a narrative in post-war British cinema, some years ago. This was at a whim of Anthony, my director, and I succumbed all too easily in an absurd attempt to appear “dead boss” to an audience with whom I was - and apparently still am - unfamiliar.