It’s not a gradual softening; it’s something that happens all at once like an elaborately drunken night out, or a sneeze. One day, the lively da-derr da-derr da derr of The Antiques Roadshow theme song signifies the approach of stultifying boredom, the next, it signifies the approach of some charming Royal Doulton egg cups and a fascinating nineteenth century object for scraping bits of poor people from the hooves of an aristocrat’s horse. As a child, the boredom of watching The Antiques Roadshow made you want to wet yourself just so you’d have something to do. So many teaspoon collections; so littlepirate treasure. Why didn’t we just go outside? Read a book! Climb a tree! All were impossible of course. This was the 1980s. Thatcher had snatched all the books and trees and cast a spell to cover the land in eternal winter. Anyway, this is television we’re talking about. To a child raised on it, even a programme that made your intestines wince was better than the worst possible thing you could imagine, which was notelevision at all. Back then, in the school holidays, we watched the same episode of Neighbours first at lunchtime and then again at teatime, and we were glad of the opportunity.
The snooker
My brother loved the snooker, so while I understand that kids aren’t universally allergic to it, I also understand that he was wrong. The snooker was a terrible thing to do to a child. Not only was it duller than having to pour the orange squash at your mum’s Tupperware party, when it was on, it also stole real television like The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air.
The Budget
Songs Of Praise
We already had to do hymns in assembly. Polluting TV, the home of Tony Robinson’s Stay Tooned! and Knightmare, with yet more hymns was asking too much of a young mind.
One Man And His Dog
The News
When it wasn’t filling your seven-year-old head with the certainty that Threads was coming true because, as you understood it, Libya had put up the interest rates so the IRA was going to have to privatise the poll tax, The Six O’Clock News with Sue Lawley was still ending your life one minute at a time.
Wish You Were Here?
The London Marathon
Running and crying and running and crying. You could get that on cross-country Wednesdays. The pride in human endeavour and the poignancy of the charity stories were lost on child-me, who opposed sport in every form (even if it was fun to be allowed to balance the TV on the kitchen worktop on a Sunday morning while the potatoes were peeled for the roast).
The Clothes Show
John Craven’s Newsround
With apologies to John Craven, who embodied Reithian values and empowered children with current affairs knowledge to stand them in good stead in later life. The thing is, John, there was Home & Away on the other side.
Ski Sunday
The Camomile Lawn
Not The Camomile Lawn per se, but what it typified to a child: boring grown-up period dramas about relationships and class tensions and—I don’t know because I never watched it—but probably camomile like that whiffy tea your nan drinks and lawns, like your dad’s always going on about. What could be worse? Kids today, eh, with their YouTube and their Netflix and their BBC iPlayer. Aside from widening social and financial inequality and the relative impossiblity of home-ownership or full-time work in a gig economy linked to a mental health crisis exacerbated by an underfunded NHS, they just don’t know they’re born, do they?
