Never since have I watched even a second of Basil the Great Mouse Detective. This wasn’t a conscious policy, or not at first. I’m fairly sure Disney, ever cautious with their home-viewing largesse, didn’t put it out on VHS with any great alacrity. It was a moderate hit, I’ve later gleaned, somewhat reversing the animated division’s Eighties fortunes after The Black Cauldron lost money, and paving the way for their major renaissance with The Little Mermaid (1989). But by the time Basil was put out on video, I was into my mid-teens, and probably fancied myself more grown-up than such fare, or keener to read Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories than watch his legacy pastiched by a rodent in a deerstalker. The moment to reacquaint myself with it never arrived.