i used to believe that when you hear the audience laughing in tv shows, it was people at home, watching tv, laughing. So i use to sit right next to the tv speaker and laugh into, thinking i one of those laughs was my own.

Kelli

When I was litte l believed that the ''backgroundlaughter'' on certain comedy shows was actually because the tv recorded the laughing from people sitting and watching the show.
So I also tried it; I put my mouth close to the speakers from the telly and laugh very hard, hoping that it would be heard on the show. Crazy.

Michael

Throughout my childhood I believed that Jimmy Saville's name was actually "Jimll Fixit".

Galina Shinra

As soon as Bruce Banners eyes started to change I'd hide behind the couch incase the Incredible Hulk would get me.
Sometimes I'd be behind the couch for over half an hour as our regular baby-sitter would tell me that he "wasn't back to normal yet".

Scottish Laddie

My parents never had a television, but occasionally I would go to my Grandparent's house and watch it there.
My Grandmother's favourite show was M*A*S*H, so that was the only thing we watched.
Until I was 8, I though the only thing on telly was Hawkeye, Radar and Hoolahan...

Anon

I used to believe that the UK government gave everyone a video camera for the sole purpose of putting people on You've been Framed!
I was proved wrong when I asked where ours was .

Heather

I use to think that all TV shows were made in massive hidden studios in the local TV station. Although I never could figure out how they got the Wheel of Fortune in there.

Mark

My theory as a kid was that all TV shows were real - they were just taking place on other planets. Cartoons took place on a relatively distant planet, but live-action shows (like 3-2-1 Contact), being more life-like, were from a planet between us and the cartoon planet.

Brendan

When I was a kid I liked the show TJ Hooker with Heather locklear, etc. Well I thought that every police officer was a "hooker". Once I was walking with my father past some cops and I yelled "look at all the hookers!" I never understood why I got an odd combination of laughs and red faces by everyone around me.

STACY M

I used to have a crush on Alan Alda, on M.a.s.h., and when I went to bed one night,I placed a handwritten sign on my window that said"Alan Alda, come here",so that he could find my house.

Beth

My mother was a huge soap fan. At the end of the soap it would say "film in new york city". I thought it was real life and that those people in New York City could see what we were doing in Alabama for an hour every day. I would try really hard during those "daytime" hours not to do anything too embarrassing (like going to poop). Now that I'm an adult I know that people in New York City dont care what we do in Alabama.

Carla

there's this corporate building near my house which is rather plain-looking and made of brick. the name of the company, which i forget, begins with a "B" and there is a large red B before it says the name. for some reason, when i was a small child and i knew the alphabet but i couldn't read, i was convinced that this was where bert from sesame street worked. it was a paperclip factory.

k

I believed that the costumes on the original Star Trek had shortened pants because there was a cloth shortage in the 1960s.

Won't Believe My Mum Again

I learned the hard way that you can't go into a picture like the do in Blue's Clues, even if you jump in head first.

Mike

I used to believe that "Little House on the Prairie" was filmed actually in the 1800's - that the cameramen just followed the Ingall's family around taping them. Then they edited out the boring parts and what was left was the hour we got to see on TV.

nrs

There is a very famous British children's TV show called Blue Peter which is almost as much of a British Institution as Big Ben. When I was a kid the presenters, John Noakes, Peter Purves and Valerie Singleton in those days, used to say at the end of each programme "we'll see you on Monday/Thursday". I thought this meant they could see me sitting on my parents' settee like I could see them on TV. When I studied 1984 for English in high school the phrase "the telescreen not only transmitted but received" reminded me of what I had thought about the Blue Peter presenters when I was a kid.

Robert

In the UK, there's a programme called "It'll Be Alright On The Night" and it shows out-takes and bloopers of other tv programmes. Whenever I watched it, I thought that when an actor got his or her lines wrong and started laughing, I thought it was because somebody had told them a really funny joke at lunchtime and they were laughing at it. Subsequently I thought that all of the out-takes and bloopers took place in the afternoon. Hmmm....

Joanne

When I was 4 or 5 Mom would watch her soaps while ironing Dad's shirts. Her favorite was "Shirts for Tomorrow". It was years later I realized what she'd been watching was "Search for Tomorrow".

Anon

My husband loved and feared The Incredible Hulk when he was little. He watched the show from the couch, ready to flee if the hulk smashed out of the tv and into his living room. One day he reasoned that he didn't really have so much to be afraid of because even if the hulk did escape...he would only be a few inches tall.

Anon

My son, then age 4, - now 13 - used to believe that Vanna White was a tiny little person, fairy size, and that's why she was smaller than the letters of the puzzles on Wheel of Fortune.

Wanda