Looking back at the standard of entertainment and the provision of information on TV and Radio in 1962, when I was in the sixth form of Watford Grammar School, it was clearly a dismal affair despite the BBC and ITV claiming otherwise. The need for propriety and the cultivation of the demure. Avoidance of the ruffling of feathers. Humour with a gentle and compliant edge. All the ingredients of utter day by day boredom as Kruschev's trawlers sailed slowly towards Kennedy's exclusion zone. Snobbery, complacency, the status quo as we enter the Swinging Sixties. Sagging Sixties more likely. Was this all I was to get?

3. odd how many of these genial smoothichops I still can recognise in 2018. Muriel Young turned my head and Donald Pleasance was capable of anything. The instantly recognisable Jonathan Routh seemed to fool the British Public into acts of foolishness despite his exposure on the TV.

8. I believed that Ronnie Carroll was made of Soap. He had dead eyes.

10. Just when you were absorbing on Tonight some new danger in the Cold War, they would wheel on Hall and McGregor with a harmless ditty with a lilt.

12 Men with Dogs dispensing truths are not to be trusted, always distracting the critical spirit by patting the noble beast.

13. Take Your Pick offered Michael Miles as Supreme Media Bully, jerking participants around by their shoulders. Hughie Greene was equally brash while simpering. Headphones provided by the RAF, date 1942. Kenneth Kendal's front tooth fell out while reading the 6 O Clock news.

14. Michael Bentine went to my Grammar School. Archie Duncan's teeth made me watch from behind the sofa.

15. Robin Hood was allowed a Brylcreem haircut and was ineffectual. Like Richard Gere in Days of Heaven.

16. The Mudlarks were as clean-cut as could be and totally unmusical. They could however click their fingers in unison I suppose. I never watched Coronation Street, but sometimes tried Crossroads as it was rumoured the scenery was always close to collapse.The credits shot across the screen on the diagonal which was about as exciting as that day's viewing was to get.

19. Peter Jones was a prominent droll and enlivened the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Mr.Varney was consistently vulgar and needed a slap.

20. What a double spread! That old Hoofer so full of himself that Brucie. And the despicable Tony Mercer blacked up and oscillating his white gloves .Charlie Chester performed live in a hanger full of GIs and no-one laughed for 17 minutes. He belched and told them, "Me chips are gassy!" Brian Matthews was another genial failure.

22. I once met Dennis King through Norrie Paramor. Pleasant enough but such drab music at such a lickety spick pace.

24. Z Cars was as real as the crime sector got, Jeremy Kemp's pitted complexion was never concealed with makeup , lit for its craggy textures.He was a surly melancholic and I wanted to join his Fan Club.

25. The Allisons always worried me for their obvious ugliness although they could under pressure achieve moments of harmony. Keith Fordyce was a monarch among the smoothichops, masquerading as a "DJ".

27. Bill Fraser and Alfie Bass were great originals.Michael Balfour (another pitted complexion) never achieved the recognition he deserved. Like Arthur Mullard his character varied not at all no matter what the role he was allocated.

28. The legendary David Coleman whose verbal infelicities were legendary, e.g. the Cuban sprinter who clinched his victory by "opening his legs and showing his class". I listened avidly as he was stone deaf to the power of language and talked through his clenched teeth, an affectation I tried for a few weeks in the 1970's.

I cannot think of a single programme featured above that I would ever watch again. Wit the single exception of The World of Gurney Slade of 1960 with Anthony Newley.