Uproar in front rooms of houses, on the streets, across towns and cities. The hit US soap discarded like a used battery. The next morning there were queues a block long outside Seneca showrooms all over the world, but no Buddies on sale. There were TV interviews and chat show appearances by Seneca CEO Ravindra Mehta, more handsome and skilled in PR than his reclusive president. There were web trailers and mall openings with men on stilts dressed in Buddy suits, a public appearance with the prime minister, yet still no sign of a single Buddy. Speculation was rife. Mehta waved his hands a great deal, smiled with perfect white teeth and spoke of fine-tuning.

One day we woke, emerging from the warm cocoons of our homes to leave for work, or school, and they were stencilled everywhere: a numerical infestation on walls and street lights, road signs, pavements and kerbs, bollards, billboards, even some vehicles. Three paired numbers. A date, we soon realised. 12.10.84.

There was outrage in government circles over what was essentially vandalism. Seneca claimed no responsibility for the appearance of the numbers. Mehta went on live television to rubbish claims of an international graffiti campaign while confirming that, yes, this was the official launch date. It must have leaked somehow, he smiled. We nodded, disbelieving, accepting his lies. We expected no better and that was the issue: it became easy to ignore what they did, to pretend their deceptions didn’t matter.

In our town the Buddy was all anyone could speak about – it must have been the same everywhere. It seemed to relate to any given subject. The battle for Montes Pyrenaeus, still raging, the dubious economy, the huge cost and fallout, both literal and figurative, of interstellar travel. The rising temperature of Earth, unemployment, immigration. We debated and disagreed and our raised voices filled the night in coffee shops, bars and restaurants, in pool halls, after-hours clubs and back alleys, during the daytime in factories and playgrounds and public spaces where people of all ages gathered in excitement, faces bright with the promise of a new era.

It was our happiest time, we owed Seneca that much. They presented us with a dream made real, a figment of imagination made flesh and bone; the gift of idealism. We were elated at the chance to become something more than we were.