Having posted a vintage bulletin on aerial placement, I have my own reception quandary. When I moved into my current house, it had 2 satellite dishes. One on the front, aimed at Astra 19.2E - home of the old Sky analogue transmissions and numerous continental stations, and one at the back, for receiving Sky Digital. I've kept the front dish aimed at 19.2E, because stations like BR-Alpha and 3Sat show more live jazz in a week than the BBC deigns to shove out in a year. Those who are thinking 'Yeah right, I bet that's not the sort of jazz he's interested in' will be disappointed to hear that the free-to-air porn is very tame and mostly obscured by ads for on-screen phone lines, and does not justify the presence of a large, ugly piece of metalwork on the facade of my abode. The prospect of an hour of archive John Coltrane every now and again, however, does.

As for the digital minidish on the back of the house, I've kept it for ready access to the BBC and ITV regional opt-outs. There's very little difference between them these days, but it was always nice to be able to dial into Puffin's Pla(i)ce if the mood took me. Also when a programme started later in Northern Ireland, it acted as a +1 option. However, the installation came into its own on New Year's Eve, allowing the Swiss Family Cheeseford to tap into BBC1 Scotland for the Still Game Hogmanay special and a rather jolly celebration of the New Year with Caledonian current affairs' top Marti Caine lookalike, Jackie Bird. The other satellite box also gets a bit of a pasting on NYE, what with Dinner for One and all that.

However, in recent months, the signal quality on the 28.2E installation has dropped, making reception very intermittent. Reading around on the Internet, I worked out that the old LNB (the bit on the front of the dish) had started to fail. I had a spare LNB, bought in Lidl many moons ago, and today I finally summoned up the enthusiasm to replace the old device. The problem is that the dish is on a part of the roof that can't be accessed readily without duckboards and considerable risk to life. As dishes require very fine adjustment to give of their best, staying at a safe distance and prodding it round with a broom handle doesn't really work. I spent most of this morning up a ladder, cutting cables to length and titting around with the brackets, but to no avail. The new LNB's on there, it's picking up something, but it's off-kilter. I had to give up as the light was failing, and I'm going to have another prod with the broom tomorrow, but I can't help but think that with minidishes going for £20-odd on eBay, I should just buy a new one and put it somewhere that I can get at it. Fair enough, but then comes the question 'Can I justify £20 plus P&P, then an afternoon up a ladder making everyone anxious, simply for one night's television a year and the occasional glimpse at Gordon Burns on North West Tonight?'. These are straitened times, and with perfectly adequate Freeview, plus whatever I can swipe from the Germans, and numerous other repair jobs ahead of this in the financial queue, I'm inclining towards 'No'.

STOP PRESS: No joy with day 2 of Operation Broomprod. I think I can, however, run to an auxiliary bracket costing less than a tenner that allows me to receive 19.2E and 28.2E on the same dish. Sorted.

Some moving pictures for day 6 of advent, in the form of expert advice from the gentlemen and lady (whodathunkit?) of Crawley Court on how to get the most from your aerial installation.

Oh dear. Oh dearie me. Graham Norton's taking over from Wogan as the Eurovision commentator. Now, I'm sure I've read an interview with Norton where he admits to not being wildly enthusiastic about the whole contest, despite being in the caricature fan demographic. I had allowed myself to become convinced that Paddy O'Connell was being lined up for the job when Sir Tel decided to cry 'basta', and, on the basis of Paddy's performance in last year's semis, I'd have had no problem with that at all. In a way it's liberating. I've always wanted to watch the German coverage, but haven't been able to drag myself away from Sir Tel and the Bailey's, but it'll be ARD all the way for 2009.

Day 5, and we whisk you back to 1977 for a recording of It's Patently Obvious, a panel game best described as a cross between Going for a Song and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. In it, experts like Professor Eric Laithwaite and laymen like William Woollard competed to identify weird and wonderful objects that had, at some stage in history, been patented by their inventors. All of this was achieved under the avuncular bespectacled eyes of Ian Macnaught-Davis, paying the rent in the days before he invented computers. In the late 1980s, with daytime schedulers requiring the odd diversion to stop Anne Diamond and Nick Owen (to say nothing of Ross King) dying from overwork, BBC1 dug out and repeated all of the surviving editions of IPO. Cheeseford believes that it's time for another run, if only to get Lorne Spicer off the bloody screen for a bit.

Day 4 of the CVTNAC and we veer away from captions and continuity to bring you Brian Walden sparking up a snout for Neil Kinnock, during an early 1980s LWT studio session for Weekend World.

Day 3 of advent, and a curio for the continuity enthusiasts. I know when this hybrid was used, but does anyone else recognise it? This message comes to you half-dead from the 24-hour McDonald's at Liverpool Street where I await the first train back to Lowestoft. I did a smash and grab raid on that London to undertake some research viewing at the BFI, attend the AQA 63336 Christmas party and do the radio stuff with Big George. The last of these went splendidly well, as you might expect. At points, it was hard to tell who was interviewing whom.

For anyone wondering what my connection to AQA is, I'm one of the researchers. I might even have told you what time your last bus leaves in the past. I also wrote most of the chapter introductions in the current Brilliant Answers book, so, in a sense, I have two books out there this Christmas. Give generously to an author who's not quite starving, but who seems to be landed with unexpected expenditure at every turn.

A word of warning that I'll be guesting on Big George's overnight show on BBC London 94.9 tonight. It kicks off at 2am, and can be heard online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/radio/

Time to open the second door on what they're all calling the CVTNAC. Oooh, bit of a left-fielder for 2 December. The nightly news programme of the German channel BR-Alpha wishes its viewers a happy new year with a picture of a transmitting mast.

I wonder if rising electricity costs will deter anyone from switching on their external Christmas lights this year? If so, some good will have come from the economic downturn. I can see the appeal of a modest row of fairy lights hung along the guttering, but I deplore the mini-Blackpools that seem to have proliferated in recent years. Maybe I'm just a joyless old sod. At least I'm not alone, as this exquisite Christopher Howse piece, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph around this time last year, proves. Merry advent to you, let's open the first door on the Cheeseford Virtual TV Nostalgia Advent Calendar.









Lovely. Another broadcasting icon tomorrow.

Yesterday, I had a very illuminating conversation with Harry King of BBC Radio Cumbria. On Monday evenings, he presents a weekly delve into entertainment nostalgia, and wants to feature Turned Out Nice Again on his show. Which is nice.

However, in a former life, Harry was a Border Television man, producing and directing programmes like Mr & Mrs and Look Who's Talking for the ITV network. As ITV stands now, it's astonishing to think that two popular network shows could come from one of the smallest regional companies. Having visited Border in the early 1990s when a friend worked there and seen the size of the studio they used for quiz shows and chat shows with a live audience, it's even more astonishing. I've just hoiked Television and Radio 1984 off the shelf, and it says that Border's biggest studio was 94 square metres. At BBC Television Centre, the old N1 news studio (now TC10, used for very small, simple productions) was 111 square metres. Sadly, the Durranhill studios are not long for this world, with the Border region set to be rationalised out of existence in the digital switchover.

They were good shows too, not parochial. Look Who's Talking regularly got top entertainment names up to Carlisle for a chat with Derek Batey. Border also made some big shows for Channel 4, not least The Groovy Fellers with Jools Holland and Rowland Rivron - which was a truly great example of what can happen when funny people are sent off to apparently random places with a camera crew in tow. Streets ahead of Paul India in Merton, certainly.

Now, just about everything studio-based ITV show is made in London, Manchester or, to a lesser degree, Leeds. Gone is Anglia's fine tradition of drama programming and Sale of the Century. No more children's programmes from Southern/TVS. No more That's My Dog from Plymouth. With the BBC determined to evict as much programming as possible from Wood Lane, London, W12 8QT, it seems odd that ITV is consolidating like mad and concentrating production in a handful of expensive bits of city centre real estate, rather than building on its regional expertise.

Last night was the Literary Review Bad Sex in Literary Fiction award, so this morning is the Literary Review Bad Sex in Literary Fiction award hangover. Over the last couple of years, the party's been supported by Hendrick's gin, and I've felt the need to support them in return. Ouch.

Rachel Johnson - sister of Boris - won the prize, and John Updike - who's been nominated for the award four times, got a lifetime achievement award in absentia, to mark his 'always the bridesmaid' status.

Highlights:

• Alexander Waugh's always-superb speech - definitely his father's son in the best possible way
• Nancy dell'Olio reading Updike's acceptance speech
• Meeting Georgina Baillie in the cloakroom queue and drunkenly asking her what it's like to have such a gracious, cool, unflappable grandad and instructing her to give him a hug from me. I think she thought I was a tabloid scumbucket trying to catch her out, because she clammed up completely. You can supply your own punchline. I'm far too gentlemanly.
  

Today, I had my first eye test in five years. After the compressed air in the eyeball and the 'clearer/more blurred' thing with the different lenses, brer optician told me that my eyesight hadn't changed at all since my last test, and that I needed new glasses only if I fancied a change or the old ones were falling apart.

As it happens, I do fancy a change, as, like just about every other four-eyed git in Britain, I have little oblong specs, because they seem to be the only ones you can get. I don't like them, though. I'd quite like something that improves my peripheral vision as well as the main focus. Little oblong jobs don't do that. I have it on good authority that Hank Marvin wears big glasses partly because they're his trademark, but also because with little frames, he wouldn't be able to see his guitar properly when he glances down.

When I was at university, I affected a pair of round tortoiseshell specs that can only be described as Richard Wattis-chic. They came from Specsavers - bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. No chance that they'd carry similar styles now, the swines. Fortunately, Opera Opera in London have very similar frames in stock. They know how to charge, but as they have them custom-made in Britain, rather than stamped out in an oriental sweat shop, that's understandable. They also offer them in clear plastic, which would be wonderful as long as I don't wear them with a dark suit. I admire Jonathan Meades too much to invite even superficial comparisons.

Back to the high street: in one shop, I asked why all of the glasses on display were little, oblong jobs. The assistant replied "There's no call for any other kind, sir". I replied that I was calling for them, couldn't find any anywhere and that maybe, just maybe, there would be some other calls for them if they had any in stock. "We tried, sir, but no-one wanted them". Having a suspicion that I was well over halfway round a circular argument, I gave up. I also suspected that the alternative styles they'd tried had come from the Dennis Nilsen Serial-Killer-About-Muswell-Hill range. So, what's the story there? Does an optometric insider have the skinny on skinny glasses? What, to be frank, are they trying to pull?

STOP PRESS: I've gone for these in tortoiseshell. Named after the Two Ronnies and only £34. It had to be done.

In his Sunday Telegraph review of Turned Out Nice Again, Peter Bazalgette thought I hadn't concentrated enough on the independent production sector. As it turns out, it's a good job I didn't write any more than I did, because former National Museum of Photography, Film & Television curator and good chap Ian Potter has done a whole book on the subject. My copy's on order, and I'll report back further when I've read it, but I suspect it'll be essential reading for anyone interested in recent TV history.

I've expressed my alarm at the acres of coverage being given to John Sergeant's exit from Strictly Come Dancing by adding to the acres of coverage with a piece in today's Sunday Telegraph. With any luck, I'll be forgiven any hypocrisy and opportunism for the fact that I seized the opportunity to suggest a robust British alternative to the awful Americanism 'water cooler TV'. Long live the 'tea-urn moment'.

Two reviews in today's blatts. In the Times, Brian Schofield is unimpressed, but says so in such a reasonable and constructive manner that I can't complain. In the Telegraph (not yet online), Sinclair McKay is full of enthusiasm, for which I thank him profusely.

In other news, I can report with great pleasure that I have accepted a modest advance from a small left-wing press to pen an unauthorised biography of Jon Gaunt.

Danny Baker's back on Saturday morning national radio, and it's fab. It's 1994 again, but in a good way. Zoe Ball's not disgracing the set up, either. He's currently reeling in the Radio 2 massive with all the greatest hits. A mate's sent me a message to ask how long before he's calling the register, and I reckon we'll be on 'How nuts is your mum?' before too long. He's not played this yet, but give it time.

I've noticed that most of the comments on this blog come from people I know and with whom I have drunk, often heavily. If anybody else is chancing upon these ramblings, don't be a stranger. Come say hello.

So, John Sergeant has pulled out of Strictly Come Dancing. It was a lose-lose situation. His ongoing presence made a mockery of the dance competition, but his absence now makes a mockery of the voters' wishes. Still, let's keep a sense of proportion. It shouldn't be the lead story on every bulletin, but it will be.

If his exit is the result of a decent man deciding his own fate, fair enough, but if it was another case of the BBC shitting itself in the face of adverse newspaper coverage, the fact will emerge eventually and make matters far far worse for Auntie.

Meanwhile, TalkSport's long-overdue sacking of Jon Gaunt, the Poundland Don Imus, means that he now has more time to spend with his gorgeous wife Lisa and his beautiful daughters Rosie and Bethany. Lucky them. I well remember peeing myself laughing when I read this and present it again for your amusement.

Encouragingly, Amazon's first order of Turned Out Nice Again has sold out, despite, or perhaps because of, my decision to add the "...this book is not worth reading" bit of Shabba Hanks' Independent write-up to the product description underneath all the nice review quotes. Don't panic, more copies are on order. I suspect the power of wireless helped enormously - many authors would sell a kidney to get two hours talking to East Anglia. Anyway, if you have bought it, thank you, and if you've received a freebie from the publisher, I hope you can get a good price for it. Moreover, if you haven't bought it, we know where you live. Your honest appraisals are always welcome. To use an old phrase beloved of the profession: if you liked the show, tell your friends; but if you didn't like it, tell us. Or, either way, you can write an Amazon review.

The broadcast with Paul Barnes was terrific fun. It's always good to talk to someone who knows what they're on about. He must have enjoyed the experience too, as he gave over two of his three precious hours to blethering with me about Duke Ellington, the Coventry Hippodrome and Liberace, and playing, to use his catchphrase, "some simply spiffing music" (not Liberace, obviously). Anyone daft enough not to stay in on a Saturday night listening to the wireless can catch up on the jollity here.

No sign of it online yet, but Roger Lewis has reviewed Turned Out Nice Again in today's Mail on Sunday. He makes the fair point that variety's such an amorphous mess, it's almost impossible to make any sort of sense of it. At times, writing the bloody thing did feel like plaiting sawdust, but I felt and still feel that it was worth trying. He concludes that it was worth trying too, and recommends it as background reading for media studies students. I'll take that as a compliment...