BEFORE hitting 50 next year, former SNJ news editor Sandra Ashenford has compiled a bucket list of 50 goals to achieve before her birthday.

The aim is to do one every week.

LIST item no. 4 – kiss someone famous.

You may know this already, because I’ve mentioned it to everyone I’ve met since it happened but in case you haven’t heard – I’ve been kissed by The Fonz.

The wonderful Henry Winkler, who played super-cool Arthur Fonzarelli in Happy Days, is now a best-selling children’s author and was at the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week.

The main focus of his talk was his work with the My Way campaign, run by the children’s newspaper First News, which highlights the fact that children learn in different ways.

Henry’s association with the campaign is linked with his best-selling Hank Zipzer novels, about a dyslexic boy who deals with his learning challenges in humorous ways but who always succeeds in the end.

Henry is himself dyslexic, although he was 31 before anyone gave a name to his particular learning challenge.

He was referred to as “the dumb dog” by his parents and was repeatedly told he was stupid and lazy by his teachers at school.

But, with enormous humour, he told the packed audience at the festival that he never felt he was stupid and he held on to the words of one teacher who told him, “You’re gonna be okay Winkler.”

That teacher is Mr Rock, who is on Hank’s side in the Zipzer stories, and is played by Henry Winkler himself in the CBBC adaptation.

Daughter number four, who is also dyslexic, loves the stories and thinks Mr Rock is fabulous.

I bought a box set of Happy Days episodes which we have watched together, and she agrees that he has always been fabulous.

I had no intention of doing something as uncool as attempting to kiss a celebrity with a serious agenda, but I did think I might ask him an academic-type question and then I would have at least one interesting quote in my PhD thesis.

During the book signing after his talk, he was so lovely to my daughter and they were chatting away like old friends, that I couldn’t resist asking if I could give him a peck on the cheek.

Instead, he put his arms round my shoulder and planted a smacker on my cheek, and I’ve been walking on air ever since.