TV and Radio

 There's never anything on the telly these days, is there, even though we've all got 300 channels to pick from. Unless you like gormless things like celebrities for the sake of celebrity or grim people pointing guns at each other, it's not something you'd switch on without good reason.

But Sunday afternoon presented multiple options as far as the eye could see, all at the same time. They were all things I'd happily watch but I can keep abreast of about 3 programmes at once, especially if a couple of them have adverts in.

ITV Racing's first ever visit to Perth was a good advert for the UK's most northerly track, showing its picturesque surroundings and general nice place demeanour. As it happened, my interest in that was curtailed early doors when Scardura unseated its jockey at the first. Not so long ago the Tour de France would have been de rigeur, sans pareil or le mot juste for me but I'm off the pace with it these days so look at it in glances but I found one of those small compensations of lockdown culture was that the BBC had cricket back, after all these years, and a good game of baseball it turned out to be. 

Meanwhile, at 3pm, I remembered to tune to R2 for Johnnie Walker's opening sequence to Sounds of the 70's and see what he plays first, which is a landmark moment in the week. Except Johnnie was having a day off and Nile Rodgers was 'curating'. First up, Curtis Mayfield, Move On Up, followed by Stevie Wonder Superstition and, if anything, better was still to come. I almost cried. The only DJ that could provide a better set would be me. Johnnie is a debonair and quite appropriate host for those who write saying that they got married in 1976, are sitting with a nice glass of red thinking about the fifteen times they've seen the Eagles and could he play something by Jackson Browne, which he does, but I think Nile and I could do better, with a bit less Springsteen and Queen and a bit more Al Green.

But, after the racing on ITV, it was George & Mildred. You simply don't flick through other channels while that is on but you can see how the cricket's going during the adverts. Meanwhile, on Talking Pictures, there was Cliff Richard in Take Me High from 1973, which I recorded, and For the Love of Ada, with Wilfred Pickles and Irene Handl, which I will catch another time.

With Mitsuko Uschida playing the Moonlight Sonata on a mixed programme conducted otherwise by Simon Rattle with Stephen Fry turning up to enthuse on the Prom in the evening, the only way anybody apart from them could see it, a good bit of the licence fee was justified on one Sunday in August so heaven only knows what it really should be. It is more of a bargain than anything one can think of.