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I used to love kids TV when I was younger - heck, I still like it now (SpongeBob SquarePants is very enjoyable, LazyTown is a work of genius) and I’m 25 this year.

I was thinking about some of the stuff from the past that I’d like to see again, so here’s my "top ten British kids TV shows they should bring back" - and who knows, maybe someone from the BBC or ITV will read this and re-commission some of them (please?!?).

10. Bernard’s Watch

"How great would it be if you could stop time with an ancient watch that’s actually a clock?", I hear nobody ask. Well, Bernard’s Watch answered that question by having the dude above get to mess around with time like he was Doc Brown or something. Every episode had a moral to it as well so you weren’t only entertained, but educated as well - like never running in front of parked cars and such malarkey. Also judging by the picture, it’s safe to say that the ladies love the clock.

9. Where’s Wally?

Where’s Wally? was a cartoon based on the shit hit books of the same name. Although looking for someone in a crowd of people sounds as interesting as watching paint dry, it actually became quite addictive. The TV series was on at about 4.30 pm - either before or after Bad Influence (yes, I’m sad enough to remember that) - but was hardly watched by anyone, sadly. It did have one of the most memorable theme tunes ever made, which is reason enough to bring it back to our screens.

8. Spatz

Spatz was a sitcom set in a fast food restaurant - something that’s never been tried again for two reasons. One, they’ll never do it as well as Spatz did it, and two, everyone would be put off fast food for life if they really saw what happened in a genuine outlet. A DVD release of this would be fantastic, but as I’ve yet to find anyone who even remembers the brilliant beginning (with a bloke in a top hat dancing between some burgers) the chances seem pretty slim. I can dream though!

7. Zzzap!

Imagine a bunch of camp actors playing wacky characters from a comic book that comes to life and you have Zzzap! Neil Buchanan starred in this as Smarty Arty (who was an artist, obviously) whilst presenting Art Attack. Incidentally, I believe there was something evil about Cuthbert Lilly - his eyes always looked dead, almost like there was some kind of monster lurking behind his wacky exterior. Perhaps I’m reading too much into this. Either way, Zzzap! was always something to look forward to after a wonderful day at school.

6. Round The Bend!

If Round The Bend! was shown on kids TV now, it would be taken off the air within a week. With segments such as Botman (a parody of Batman, with the lead character having a fat arse), John Potatoe’s Newsround (a parody of John Craven’s Newsround, presented by a potatoe) and Tommy’s Magic Time Trousers (where a boy could travel through time by simply dropping his trousers) causing a bit of an outrage, Mary Winehouse used her magical powers to get the show cancelled. With political correctness gone mad in this country as it is, I can see no hope at all for a return of this magnificent programme. I do hold out some hope for a DVD release though - then again, I am an eternal optimist!

5. Fun House

Fun House was a real crazy show, were anything could go. At least, this is what the theme tune told us! The reality was slightly more mundane, but the sight of Pat Sharp’s mullet was enough to have women go weak at the knees. With a brilliant end segment (which involved running around a giant obstacle course thingy and then racing in karts), this was a massive hit with schoolkids all across the country. I’d like to see Pat Sharp (and the lovely twins!) return to what we all remember him for - bad hair and general madness.

4. Rainbow

Even if Rainbow did have an odd setup (a bloke living in a house with three puppets does seem a trifle weird) it still manages to attract a cult following, even now. Let’s save Geoffrey from his life of taxi driving, and bring him back to entertain kids of all ages - it’s what he was born to do! You can actually get some episodes on DVD, but a new series would do down even better. I believe there was some talk of an adult show happening - I’d much rather prefer it like it used to be though, please.

3. Mike & Angelo

Mike & Angelo was about a boy who discovered an alien was living in his house. I have no idea where the ideas for these shows come from, but I’d like to shake the hand of the person who dreamt up this one. For some reason they changed the actor who played Mike without any really explanation which is a pity, as it went a bit downhill after he left. Here’s a quick bit of trivia for you - the guy who played Angelo went on to become the narrator for the Teletubbies! I bet he longs for the return of Mike & Angelo as much as I do (I’d at least like the CITV channel to show repeats at some point).

2. Maid Marian And Her Merry Men

Ah, Maid Marian And Her Merry Men. With a simply fantastic cast, including Tony Robinson (of Blackadder and, erm, Time Team fame) and Danny John-Jules (The Cat in Red Dwarf), this programme was simply unmissable when it was shown on the BBC. It took the original story of Robin Hood and flipped it on it’s head - Marian became the hero, whereas Robin was a bit of a wimp. With some genuinely funny comedy, I was glad when it was announced that this was coming out on DVD (I believe that all 4 series’ have now been released), but a new series would be out of this world. Come on Tony, write another one!

1. Knightmare

Knightmare was simply the best true kids TV show ever made, in my opinion. A truly innovative programme that was well ahead of its time, Knightmare combined "virtual reality" with a game show format to absolutely fantastic effect. Challenge TV did repeat this for a while until losing the rights (get them back you fools!) and a new format was proposed back in 2004, but the essence of the original was lost (the dungeoneer could clearly see their surroundings) - "ooh, nasty" indeed. A return for this is LONG overdue.

There we have it then, ten kids TV shows I’d like to see come back - many will disagree with me and say I should have mentioned other programmes, but I am but one man and my joys are simple.

Will any of them return? I’m forever an optimist, so I’ll say yes - for if only one does return, I have done my job (well, I can fool myself into believing that I have anyway!).

I, David McFarlane, dislike the BBC intensely - I think this comes from having a big pile of bullshit delivered, courtesy of their news and current affairs output, on a fairly regular basis.

On Monday night, their consumer rights programme Watchdog had a piece on Internet shopping and the dangers associated with it. To try and highlight how easy it is to scam people, they decided to create a website that sells gifts at competitive prices (such a wonderful use of taxpayers money, don’t you think?).

Allegedly it only costs £60 to set up a site like theirs, but if you believe that then I’m afraid you have as much intelligence as Jade Goody after twelve pints. Many companies would gladly charge you upwards of £800 for such a site (which reminds me - if Watchdog want somebody to look into, how about those idiots who "create" websites for around £2,000?), so to suggest this would cost the average punter £60 is frankly rubbish.

Now the whole point of doing this was to show how easy it is to scam people on the Internet, but not once did we hear anything about how to avoid encountering such sites in the first place. In fact there were only two people intereviewed that had been victims, along with an "Internet expert" (quite how he got this title, I don’t know) - not exactly a crisis, is it?

The cherry on top of the bullshit pie is that while Watchdog harp on about deceptive online practices, they admit that they intentionally falsified domain registrant information - which is in breach of the domain registration terms of service. Well done.

The BBC continuously spout out crap that is just simply not true - another example is a piece they did on Panorama about Wi-Fi connections being harmful to children. Without any actual evidence, they decided to carry out some "experiments" to try and work out if children would be affected by radiation coming from the connections - radiation was used multiple times, when in fact you get the same amount of radiation from a light as you do from a Wi-Fi connection. Of course, these "experiements" found that the danger risk is quite high (when it’s actually probably more dangerous to go to the toilet in the dark).

The BBC employs morons and presents lazy journalism as fact - the sooner we stop paying for this rubbish, the better.

Although it still has one redeeming feature I suppose - Charlie Brooker.

Following on from my rant (you’ll notice I do that quite a bit) the other day about the tabloid media’s obsession with crime, I now turn my attention to TV’s obsession with it.

Every single person in this country is supposed to pay a TV license, which costs £135.50 a year, in order to watch TV. That in itself is a joke, but the biggest joke of all is that this money is used to essentially run the BBC. I wouldn’t have a problem with that if the BBC didn’t do three things:

1)  Show more repeats of shows everyone has seen at least four times before

2)  Waste money on pap like Strictly Come Dancing or any of that musical guff with Graham Norton

3)  Give us such godawful news coverage

The first two points are fairly self explanatory, but I’ll talk about the last point.

The BBC have a 24 hour news channel (BBC News 24 - imaginative name, eh?). It is rubbish and almost completely unwatchable. Why? Wall-to-wall coverage of nothing.

As an example, I’ll use the whole Madeline McCann thing - when her parents were being questioned about her disappearance, the BBC had more than one reporter outside the door of the police station reporting that the McCann’s were IN the police station. They didn’t run this once or twice during the day, they did it EVERY HALF AN HOUR!!! Picture the scenario of a reporter standing outside a door basically saying "yes, they’re behind that door being questioned" for at least 7 hours. The sad thing is that this really happened.

Getting back to my post headline though, the TV news shows are almost as bad as the tabloid press when reporting crime.

Our local BBC news is Reporting Scotland, and every couple of weeks they seem to wheel out the same footage of people fighting whilst drunk. The problem I have with this is that there is never any news to go along with the footage. Telling everybody that when people get drunk they might get violent is like telling a child that Santa doesn’t exist when they’re 23 - sorry if I’ve ruined anyone’s life with that comment!

I can’t understand why we’re always being told that young people are evil, getting drunk is bad and Sean Connery is a good Scot (live in Scotland then you arsehole!) - it’s all complete rubbish.

I accept that drinking too much is not a good idea, but if you want to do that why should I care? It’s the same reason why I couldn’t give a shit that gangs want to kill each other - it’s less people for me to have to bother about.

When it comes to crime it’s fairly simple - be vigilant, but don’t be afraid.

Easy.

If anyone’s been watching Ross Kemp In Afghanistan, you’ll probably know what I mean by that headline.

Here we have a former EastEnders actor putting himself squarely in the firing line (literally) by joining up with the Army in Afghanistan. It’s a surprisingly good programme, which is both interesting and also quite sad - to hear from some of the soldiers’ family members on how they feel about their son/husband/dad going to war is quite unsettling.

The thing that truely surprised me was how dangerous it must have been for Ross Kemp to be there. Before the series began I envisioned him seeing battle from a far distance and possibly riding in a tank or something, but instead we see him nearly getting shot! It must have been brown trousers time for him on more than one occassion, but I can also imagine that the actual soldiers might have been a little pissed off about having to make sure some luvvie didn’t end up getting killed.

The show is running off the back of Ross Kemp On Gangs, which, as the title would suggest, was Ross Kemp meeting gangs. He did meet some very dangerous people during the making of that programme - one gang in fact set him on fire as part of a welcoming ceremony (something even Wimbledon probably wouldn’t have attempted back in the Crazy Gang days)!

Getting back to the Afghanistan thing though, it makes you remember that there’s still fighting going on there. We very rarely hear anything on the news, or read anything in the papers about it, but watching this reminds you that it is all still very real.

If you haven’t seen Ross Kemp In Afghanistan yet, it’s on Sky One at 9pm on Monday (and repeated about a billion times on Sky Two and Sky Three throughout the week).

Jeez, not another person who’s dead.

Jeremy Beadle is probably best know for either Beadle’s About or You’ve Been Framed, which were both hugely popular shows for ITV.

I can remember watching You’ve Been Framed on a Sunday night and thinking it was the funniest programme I’d ever seen (I was about seven), but for some reason I never really liked Beadle’s About.

The thing I always admired about Jeremy Beadle was that he was able to make people laugh at themselves - indeed, he was quoted as saying that he didn’t care if people hated him for doing it, as long as they watched him.

It’s a crying shame that he left this place at only 59, which is really no age at all.

Even though he hasn’t been on TV for ages, he’ll still be missed.

If you’ve never seen or heard of Curb Your Enthusiasm, please leave. Now. Seriously.

Although it gets shafted in the UK (Monday nights at 10.35 on More4, what the fuck?), it’s one of the funniest shows around - Larry David, he what was one of the creators of the also-excellent Seinfeld, really knows how to do subtle (and not so subtle) comedy well.

I think that one of the unsung heroes of the show has to be Richard Lewis. I mean I’ve never really found the guy all that funny, but on Curb Your Enthusiasm he’s like a different person!

Amazing.

The episode I’ve enjoyed most so far is probably The Producers one. I’m not going to spoil it if you haven’t seen it, but trust me when I say it’s magnificent.

Which brings me to another point.

I’ve never been able to understand the minds of TV schedulers - we get rubbish like EastEnders at prime time, but decent stuff like Curb and Entourage gets stuck at ridiculous times on backwater channels.

Is it so hard for Channel 4 to move a programme with Jamie sodding Oliver to some other time of day? How about 3 a.m.?

But no, we’ll still be left to see what happens when Jamie shows people where meat really comes from or how Gordon Ramsey turns a shit restaurant into a slightly less shit one.

Idiots.

(I’ve just realised I’ve ended another post with the word "idiots" - how idiotic.)

I actually meant to post about this the other day, but it totally slipped my mind.

If anyone’s been watching Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack on e4 then you’ll know who Liam Young is.

If you haven’t seen it, he’s an 19 year old guy who claims to be a huge business success - but the reality is very different. You see, Mr Young has been speaking out of his arse about how well he’s actually done.

First off he claimed to be turning over £200,000 a year, which would be fine if he wasn’t going about asking how to lie about how much money he was making. The impressive guys on the Digital Spy forums have also managed to dig up some dirt on the snivelling little turd.

My main gripe is that Channel 4 can let somebody claim such outrageous bullshit without first doing their research. A simple Google search for his company (Oxy UK) would have pretty much revealed everything they could possibly need to know.

For for more info on this cretin, have a look here and here.

Idiot.

Panorama ran a special episode tonight about children being safe on the Internet. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I’ve ever seen.

I should make clear that I believe paedophilia is not something to be laughed at under any circumstances - but these programmes are.

Every attempt that is made to try and come across as being serious just ends up like an episode of Brass Eye!

It’s blatantly obvious that Chris Morris was right when he did the paedophile special that caused so much hysteria a few years back - the media would have you believe that the Internet is full of perverts waiting to ensnare your child at the soonest opportunity.

Yes these fruitcakes do exist, but what kind of parent are you if you let your child go off willy-nilly anyway?

Have we become so useless in this country that we need to be told how to look after children?

Or is everyone too interested in whether Britney Spears is a nutjob?

It has to be said that the offerings on TV this year were very, very poor.

I’m not that much of a sad bastard that I waste my life watching hours of shit, but you’d expect at least something half decent on Christmas Day - Only Fools And Horses, etc. in the past have been a good way to finish Christmas.

Unfortunately, as most media people seem more concerned with pap like Strictly Come Dancing or X Factor I expect that the standards will slip even further in the future.

On a happier note, Dunfermline won again (two wins in as many weeks, I cannae believe it!) - although Newcastle lost to Wigan.

I’ll be back with more more pish tomorrow.

I fucking love Charlie Brooker.

Not only does he speak more than sense than almost every other "TV expert", but he seems to actually even despise the very company he works for (the beasts known as Endemol, famous for such shit as Big Brother).

I can’t understand why so many people are happy to watch seriously bad shows such as X Factor, the aforementioned Big Brother or Britain’s Got (Very Little) Talent - I’d rather scoop out my eyeballs with a spoon than watch any of that guff.

If there were more Charlie Brooker’s in the world, surely television would be slightly more bearable.

Toodle pip.

EDIT:

I’ve added a video that now works.