THE TELEVISION HOW IT HAS PINNED US TO THE COUCH FOR YEARS EVEN IF ITS RUBBISH!

Being a child of the 60's.....i grew up straining my eyes at a tiny screen inside a huge 2ft wide box that was 4ft deep, due to thosemassive cathode ray tubes and glass tubes that took about 20 minutes to warm up once the set had been turned on. The actual act of turning on those early sets was a risky operation as the switches were mainly clunky knobs. The twisting of those clunky knobs was a hernia -producing task.

The on off was one huge clunk, but the channel selector was a  mass of clunks, well a few as there was only two channels , the good ol 'beeb' n' ITV. Later ,of course came the intellectual odd one ,BEEB2. In those old days the pictures were not so much black n' white, but grey n' grey. I seem to remember lots of cowboys and American detectives and British cops as in Z-Cars with its distinctive theme tune which they still play at the Everton ground at Goodison park.

Lots of Irwin Allen stuff  like 'Voyage to the bottom of the sea'; 'Lost in space', but we beat them when a certain white haired bad tempered time lord in a telephone box arrived quietly , but then exploded with the pepperpot Daleks! With its distorted blobby opening titles and etherial music with hissing and ashmatic wheezing was wonderful and at the time terrifying with the famous possible urban myth that people hid behind the settee when the good Doctor and various lousy special effected monsters were on. The fact that you could hide behind the settee shows how things have changed. The settee was in the middle of the room close up to the telly. Not over against the far wall where it doesn't matter how far away you are from the 76 inch flat screen telly on the far side of the room. Even if you could hide behind the settee the kids wouldn't ,they've been spoiled by wonderful realer than reality special CGI effects the wonderful fear the imagination could instill has dissappeared and gone.

Another favourite of mine which many dont remember was a telly version of the 'Dirty Dozen', but there was only four in 'Garrisons Gorillas!'....Always behind enemy lines in German uniforms blasting away with Schmeisser machine guns. I got the DVD's and like many revisits to your past , it never quite hits the hoped for nostalgic G-Spot. One that did ,i still love was the spy series with the meanest assassin of all, Edward Woodward as 'Callan', still brilliant.

Boyhood excitment peaked with Apollo 8 going around the back of the moon, then Apollo 11 landing on the moon. At this stage i was a space mad nut thanks to a certain Gerry Anderson and his puppet and string Supermarination series of Thunderbirds, Stingray,Superca,Fireball XL5 and my favourite the real life UFO.

The clunky knobs were replaced by swimming pool diving board-like press buttons and ,wonderful colour! In those long never to be forgotten days we used to go outside to play, but if there was a big film on ,like on a Saturday evening we'd go home to watch it ,as stuff didn't get repeated very often. so if you missed it ,you waited for years. I remember the excitment of the first Bond film on telly.

We never had BBC2 for a long time and on a Monday evening at 8 o'clock, ITV had news in 'World in Action ,whilst the 'BEEB' had Panorama, yet another news show, but on BEEB2 which we could hear, but not see they used to have 'The High Chaperal', or Alias Smith and Jones'. Then 'Oh joy be unrestrained we finally got BEEB2  with a picture so lots of cowies n' indians and no more news and current affairs.

As the years and tellys evolved the main drawback about colour telly was that colour telly was a lot clearer and the effects which were crappy in the days of black n' white were missed , but not with colour, remember the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who onwards for many years and the great soap 'Crossroads', a Birmimgham motel made of cardboard.

Then came the video and you could keep all the programmes in the growing heap of tapes that we all have and i'm afraid to admit still have. All the action and adventure dried up and replaced by soaps and game shows were ,if you were lucky you'd win a toaster. More channels flooded in with the onset of sky.

Nowadays the millions of channels we flick through with our very handy and looseable hand sized remote controls, have mainly repeats of stuff thats been on twice that same day. These days people dont want to be in a band or musicians playing gigs, etc, they just want to be pop stars ,so singing into their hairbrush is enough to get them onto the talent spotting shows that infest our telly weekend nights as in The X-Factor. The talent moved from singing to dancing to ice slating and everything is geared to 'the Celebrity!', a person whose just famous for being famous. The calendar doesn't chart the year anymore ,its what celebrity talent show is on ,Strictly Comes Dancing'; X-Factor and 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here!'

A very odd thing is the amount of adverts for training and sport training DVD's as we all need our core developed and a 6-pack ,by dancing to the instructions coming from your telly as you dance or shadow box on the mat in front of the set.....Very odd!

We're all spoiled for choice ,but unlike in the days of 2 channels were every day was different , now we have hundreds of channels all the same ,shite!

PETER CAPALDI....DOCTOR WHO , No 12.....HE'S BEEN GONE AND IS ALMOST HERE !

They say that time travel is impossible ,to an extent i suppose it is.....You can't go back to change the past as it has happened and if you could you would fuck up the universe by the cause of TEMPORAL PARADOXES ....Going back and killing your grandad ,so you would never be born ,so you couldnt grow to go back and kill him ,so you would then be born as normal ...Only to grow ....And go through it all again ,he'd die ; You wouldn't be born and on we go, ad infinitum ,so feasibly time would grind to a halt .....Thats according to our famous beloved past bugger-upper ,DOCTOR WHO!....The futures a different kettle of TARDIS grease as we are powering into the future all the time, whereas we can't affect the past ,everything we do affects the future. We travel through the present on our way to the future at the speed of time. The speed of time is relative to a variety of things.

Your mind is like a TARDIS and whereas your surroundings are the room ,office,car your in ,whatever ,your mind is infinite and makes you feel like your travelling through time. When your happy and active time zooms by, holidays flash past for example....When your bored or pissed off ,time drags by . You look foreward to something a long way in the future and suddenly your sitting there and its long passed and happened. 

When you were a kid things like school holidays seemed to last for months , nowadays that same period would be about the same length of time you could hold your breath for! As you get older time does accelerate , like a formula 1 car ,in the distance ,moving slowly over great distances ,in the distance, then, as it comes near it blasts past and dissapears into the distance again like events and years.

Only fairly recently the 'newest' DOCTOR WHO'..MATT SMITH announced his retirement from the role. The excitment built ....Who was the replacement ; The 50th anniversary was to be a DOCTOR WHO orgy of Whovian celebrations ......Suddenly thats history ,already been repeated on television.

Next is CHRISTMAS and forget the Oueens Speech ,etc ,DOCTOR WHO'S regeneration will take place the new boy will be unveiled. The drink, food ,presents ,decorations and most new year resolutions have already been long forgotten, its all over for another year.....We were waiting for the glimpse of the ,it has to be said 'very promising' looking new Doctor ...PETER CAPALDI....An interesting looking character who looks half the age of WILLIAM HARTNELL the first Doctor, even though he's the same age.

It'll be good to have a crazed ,bad tempered old fellah as the Doctor ,rather than the beloved schoolgirl sex symbols of lately, they have to cater for the miserable old farts amongst us!.....Before you know it the year will be drawing to a close ,we'll see the new series and SKY will be showing the repeats five times a day and capaldi will be over before you know it and here we go again, but in the period of time the calendar will be running a lot faster as the DOCTOR WHO'S and JAMES BONDS change seemingly on a weekly basis.

They shouldn't call it old age ....Fast or accelerated age would be more accurate.

SHOULD JONATHAN WHOSSY,BE GIVEN THE SONIC SWEWDWIVER AND BE THE NEW DR WHOssy?

Somewhere in the far flung reaches of the galaxy, on an alien planet, on a B.B.C.-owned rock quarry, the quiet and stillness is broken by an asthmatic wheezing sound as a blue 1950's police telephone box materialises on the rocky floor. The doors open and from the amazingly large interior, loud schoolboy squeals n' giggles can be heard. Then a tall man with a strange tight suit and a very loose haircut stumbles out. This exiled wanderer(without pay) in space n' time is, Doctor Whossy. He isn't alone he has a black hairy alien assistant/ pet with him, skipping along waving his arms about manically, this is a Russell from the planet Brand. They make an odd couple in this seemingly deserted alien B.B.C. backlot. They are giggling as they have just brought the universe to the verge of war, as they have been leaving obscene messages to the DALEK answer phone on the Dalek homeplanet of Skaro. The Emperor Dalek was particually upset with references to a sexual encounter the Doctors hairy pet is supposed to have had with DAVROS, the creator of the Daleks. The repercussions have reverberated throughout the known universe, complaints have poured into the Time Lords on the Doctors home planet of Gallifrey from all kinds of various lifeforms;Cybermen,Sontarens, Sea Devils, even conservative M.P's. The spaceways're filled with bandwagons that various howling (political,not intelligent) lifeforms are all jumping on. While all this goes on the TARDIS(Time And Relative Dimensions In Space) vanishes off into the vortices of space and time manned by two other TARDOS'S( Tossers And Real Dimwits On Suspension). Maybe oneday the Doctors lost wanderings and mischiefmaking will end and he will finally return home to the chatshow from whence he came. As for Russell, give him a venusian banana, that should keep him happy for a good while and inspire some odd jokes to pad out the material for the sketch that this will all become when he takes it 'on the road for his next tour.