I find myself shocked and saddened by the drivel that passes for entertainment in the world of children’s’ television these days. I switched on my TV this afternoon and found myself confronted with the most inane rubbish I have ever had to endure while consuming a low-fat sweet and sour chicken meal. The first beguilement I had the misfortune to come across was a programme entitled “Bamzooki”, in which teams of little-known celebrities and various overconfident youngsters design assorted computer animated creatures, or ‘Zooks’, which are then pitted against one another in a variety of insipid and unexciting ‘battles.’

My puzzlement and condemnation is generated by these so-called battles. The programme I watched involved contestants’ creations respectively running from one end of a virtual table and back, knocking over some sticks and, finally, attempting to stay on a nigh on stationary spinning wheel for as long as possible. Where are the fights to the death? Where the brutality, the carnage, the appendages being ripped off in veritable showers of bloody pixels? I appreciate that gratuitous violence in children’s programmes is likely to be frowned upon by the masses but really, what is the point? It was certainly no Robot Wars.

The next thing to scandalise and astonish me was the pronouncement by the leading character in a programme called ‘Cavegirl’- “a comedy series about everyday life for a teenage girl growing up in prehistoric times” – that, although she enjoyed ‘getting-off’ with complete strangers, she did not feel disposed to marry one. What?! While I find it difficult to accept the fact that the Philip Scofields of a bygone age have been cruelly replaced by denim-clad simpletons, such as the likes of Fern Cotton, my dissatisfaction with such gibberish goes beyond a mere longing for the comforts of my own childhood. Maybe I am more old-fashioned than I had previously suspected but does this sort of attitude really need to be perpetuated amongst the country’s youth?

I am suddenly reminded of that terrifying space Ulysses thing with all the dead/sleeping crew floating in the ship’s hanger. And Rainbow Brite. I used to have the toy horse with the rainbow mane (Starlite) and a comic book with a recipe for making Star Sprinkles… sigh….ah Star Sprinkles. I bet Fern Cotton hasn’t even heard of Star Sprinkles.