Television

I read with pleasure that the Chief Executive of Channel 4, who is called Andy Duncan, has awarded himself a small pay rise of 100%. Some people have already complained, of course – how typical of our time that someone who is doing his best to better himself can be so thoughtlessly attacked. It isn't his fault that so many people let themselves get robbed blind by Richard and Judy's phone scam, is it?

Of course I am old enough to remember a gentler time, before such things as television were commonplace. On long winter nights we used to huddle around the piano, wishing that one of us could play it. So when Logie Baird invented Television, with the help of his little companion Boo Boo, he found an eager audience. I remember when we used to gather around that old wooden box and peer at the fuzzy grey face inside. And then, television arrived. So we popped the lid back on granny's coffin and watched that instead. It was a paraffin television. It wasn't bad, bud the picture got cloudy whenever you turned the wick up.

And it has proved a great success. As Lord Reith so presciently forecast, “At least it will take people's minds off cooking and gardening.”