My husband believed as a child that there was a television series called "To Be Announced" and that it was just a random sort of a show, different actors, different subjects, different times.

Mel

I used to believe that Bert from sesame street was supposed to be a talking banana, and wondered what talking food Ernie was supposed to be. After a while I decided he must be a hamburger...

Ashtray

I believed that BP petrol stations were owned and run by the same people who did Blue Peter (because of the initials)

Anon

I used to believe when the Transformers song went "More than meets the eye", that those were the names of two of the Transformer characters -- Morethan and The Eye -- and that the show would be about the showdown when Morethan met The Eye.

Anon

my mum told me that it was prince charles who was in the Bungle costume on Rainbow.

lm

I lived in Peru, South America, until I was 4 years old. Until that time I watched North American TV shows dubbed into Spanish. I always thought it was so strange that the people on TV could talk one way and move their lips a different way. I tried doing it...never could.

Andrea

i used to believe that the actress Ellen Degeneres was actually Ellen The Generous. i used to wonder what she had done to get a name like that, maybe helping sick kids...?

rose

I always wondered about those cooking shows. The chefs could put food in an oven, and then pull it out and they'd be cooked! I just guessed my mom was just a bad cook.

Daniel

When there was no TV show scheduled for a specific time the listings would say, "To Be Announced." I always thought that this was the name of a show and for some reason assumed is was a religious program so I always avoided it.

No thanks, I'll just read a book

I used to think all the kids on the Cosby Show were Bill Cosby's actual children. My wife set me straight when I was about 35. I'm so dumb sometimes.

A

When I was little, there was a show that my father watched which seemed like all the time called "Dinosaurs" about a robot/costume -like dino family who led human lives in the Stone Ages. They kinda were like the Simpsons too. Anyways there was this one episode where Senclaire, (the father dinosaur) couldn't wait to get rid of his rude, pain-in-the-ass, aging mother-in-law. In the show, it was the custom to throw the elderly into a deep, deep hole just before death. They even demonstrated this in a little clip with a poor dino being thrown into the pit, screaming at the top of their aging lungs. After viewing the clip, Sencliare and his boss laughed. Senclaire's son asked him if his grandmother should find her way out of the pit, and an eager Senclaire scoffed "Once you're in, you're in." And this on account scared me to no end. (Im clausterphobic by the way.)

Well, needless to say, I was TERRIFIED of being thrown into a deep dark pit with already rotting bodies whom had met the same ordeal before me. And i believed humans in real life did this to their poor elderly. I remember crying for my grandpa, and ultimately dreading the day I would meet my fate.

I would tell everyone I never wanted to get old. No one does, but my real reason was so I could escape being chucked into this so-called pit. At one point my greatest mission in life was to find and cover up the pit.
I remember crying to my mother, asking would they force me to attend Grandpa's "pit" ceremony when his time came. Naturally, she was very confused.

It never really did occur to me that we actually "bury" our dead. And to this day, whenever we pass a cliff or a hole, my brothers oh-so graciously remind me.

Life in the Pits

Around the age of the 8 or 9 I noticed that Barbara Eden in the "I Dream of Jeannie" repeats was pretty darn sexy. I was convinced that a) this was just an accident of the production rather than intentional and b) I was the ONLY PERSON WHO NOTICED THIS. I believed that for 6 years.

David T

As a child, I didn't watch TV: I only heard people talking about it. As a result, I used to believe that there was a children's TV series set in Australia called 'Skippy the butch kangaroo.'

Lesley who didn't watch tv as a child...

I thought that the TV show "Tomorrow's World" would tell me what would happen to me the next day. This was a short-lived belief, cos I watched it ...

Bryan

Because my mum went on about violent TV influencing kids, and since I didn't have TV 'till I was 10, when I was about 5 I really believed that anyone who watched Power Rangers would grow up to be a murderer or sociopath or something.
I never talked to people if they told me they liked the show.

boiled_elephant

I used to believe that the laughter I heard on programmes such as 'friends' after a funny comment was made was actually people's laughter who were sitting at home watching it at the same time.

Cara

When I was about 6 and my little brother was 4 we liked to play make-believe. On of our favorite things to play was Batman and Robin. We didn't know much background behind Batman and Robin because our mom thought it was too violent of a show for us to watch. Our favorite thing to act out was a wedding ceremony in which Batman and Robin would wed. We didn't realize that Robin was a boy...

Kiersten

I used to believe that Bamber Gasgcoine was God, as my Mum had told me that God knew everything. Coincidentally, so did Bamber, as he knew all the right answers to the questions on University Challenge. With impeccable logic, it seemed that the only resolution to this theological conumdrum was that Bambi was God. He haunted my dreams for some time after this revelation.

Dave Boyle

I used to believe that all TV shows were drawn, like cartoons, and that the ones with real actors were actually drawn with very good crayons.. It never occurred to me that they were real people o_O

Meg

When I heard someone anounce their telephone number on a TV show, (say Dragnet, or Perry Mason, etc.) I thought that you could call that number and converse with that character while he's on that program.

Anon