Last updated at 06:35, Friday, 02 May 2008

THIS WEEK I have been looking into the possibilities of buying a television set for my new sports-free zone.

It will be a place where there will be no Match of the Day; no three-day cricket internationals and definitely no three o’clock from Kempton Park.

Actually, I already have this place; it is upstairs in the spare bedroom, but the portable set we have up there isn’t up to much.

Even if you kneel on top of the chest of drawers and wiggle the aerial about out of the window, it will only pick up BBC Scotland.

Lately I have watched a debate on fish prices from the Scottish Parliament; a travelogue about the glories of Arbroath (I have been to Arbroath and believe me, it was of necessity a very short programme) and a series looking back at the White Heather Club.

This was once a prime-time television staple, but when you have watched a re-run of the 1965 New Year special, featuring inebriated men singing Three Craws Sat Upon a Wa’ and tartan-clad dancers leaping about in time to accordion music and occasionally shouting ‘Hoy!’, you wonder why.

The Caledonian theme is always well to the fore on Border TV, where you can see an advert with a scary Scottish woman telling us how to phone the anti-smoking helpline.

Television provides little real entertainment these days. There are people falling over at weddings and toddlers toppling into paddling pools on You’ve Been Framed and if you like watching men using sticks to poke little coloured balls into holes on a green table there are hours of snooker.

It’s not even worth watching Coronation Street, as you can get the plot from the TV listings: “Gail struggles to cope; Jason and Becky get closer; Leanne plans a new business venture.”

The BBC could always bring back the Black and White Minstrels - but in these politically correct times they would surely have to be known as the Flesh-Coloured Songsters.

Now that might be worth watching.

First published at 19:38, Thursday, 01 May 2008
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk