Food for thought (not chocolate this time!): If you could be any fictional character who would it be?

I’m not normally a ‘box set’ kind of girl, sitting for hour after hour watching episodes one to a zillion of the latest US cop show, but there’s something about Castle, a trashy crime novelist who solves murders while ‘researching’ for his books, that’s got me hooked – and thinking. I love Richard Castle. I don’t mean I fancy him, I mean a love him as a character and if I could be anyone at all in fiction, it would have to be him. For a start, he’s what I’ve always wanted to be - a novelist. A rich, successful novelist with a stunning Manhattan apartment. Wonderful. He effortlessly writes crime novels (although considering he solves at least three murders a week, I’ve no idea how he finds the time) which are – in real life - available on Amazon. Secondly, he ‘researches’ for his novels with the woman he loves, Kate Beckett, who happens to be an amazingly brilliant detective with the NYPD. Every day Castle cheats death and catches killers while delivering witty one-liners on cue, maintaining a great complexion and a hairstyle nothing short of perfection. No matter whether he’s trapped in a freezer (season 3, ep 17), being chased by a tiger (season 4, ep 10), or dying from poison (season 6, ep 3), Castle never loses his cool, never needs to comb his hair and always gets that book out on time. Nothing fazes him, no matter how many times he’s been held at gunpoint (there are too many episodes to list!). He’s also got an attractive, intelligent daughter, a mother who always has the right advice and an international spy for a father.

I know I should probably be ‘deeper’ in my choice of which fictional character I’d like to be. I’ve got countless books, programmes and films to choose from. Perhaps I should be someone who has done a huge amount of good; a Dickensian character who’s helped the poor, Katniss in Hunger Games for (sort of) overcoming evil, or maybe, as a political writer, I should want to be Francis Urquart from the original House of Cards, beating back the competition to become Prime Minister.

I’m afraid, however, I have to be true to myself. Surely Richard Castle has done ‘good’? He’s caught over 100 murderers by the end of season 6, for goodness sake! That’s my line, anyway, and I’m sticking to it!