Isn’t it funny how something that occurred in the past can have a profound effect today.
For example, the man who invented the TV remote control all those years ago could never have envisaged how grateful we are in 2025 that he included the ‘Mute’ button.
Or imagined the two main reasons we owe him our gratitude – Davina McCall and Alan Carr.
Which reminds me, I recently heard that the man who invented the TV remote control had passed away.
Apparently, his wife came home one afternoon and found him down the back of the sofa. She told the coroner that, in recent weeks, he’d been acting rather remote.
I cherish my remote control because my way of watching programmes containing advertisements is to record them and catch up with them later, so I can fast-forward through the ads . . . and the dull parts.
My remote gets a lot of use during shows like “The Most Shocking TV Moments of the 60s (or 70s)” etc.
Not only because most of the clips they include wouldn’t shock an unworldly trainee vicar, but also because these shows run to more than two hours.
Two hours plus of alleged celebrities, all of whom are chosen from the same shallow pool, pretending to be horrified by clips from 70s sitcoms, can be exhausting.
Viewers watch a clip. Then we watch the ‘celeb’ watching the clip. Then we watch them describing what we’ve already watched and why they think it’s outrageously shocking.
What is the point?
The fact is, we’ve all seen these same clips at least a dozen times before – without being mortified.
But then, we don’t trouser a fee to pretend we are.
It’s ironic that these ludicrously padded-out shows are on the same channel that produces modern TV ‘classics’ like “Britain’s Favourite Chocolate Bar” and “Britain’s Favourite Biscuit”, which must get a fraction of the viewing figures that those unfairly maligned 70s sitcoms would have enjoyed.
In 40 years, will they make shows in which ‘celebs’ sit around ‘Tut-Tutting’ at shocking clips of “Britain’s Favourite Crisp”?
I hope I’m around to find out!