Out of the many hundreds of TV channels on satellite, there is sometimes a chance that you might find something good on. And in a sea of programmes that are strange and unfamiliar, there's always a good chance that "the best thing on" is going to be something old that you remember from the days when there were only three channels and you were grateful that there was anything on at all.
A channel which used to be good for that was 'Challenge TV', which used to screen classic game shows. You could marvel at the 1980s style of 3-2-1, or ponder exactly how it was that Max Bygraves managed to appear to be the world's surliest and least interested game show host during his time on Family Fortunes.
This was possible until Challenge TV lost their minds, and decided that nobody wanted all these old classic programmes, and that instead it would be "better" to show modern game shows which nobody had ever heard of, or, crucially, gave a damn about.
So it was back in 2003, before the rot set in, that I found myself watching 3-2-1 again. Now, picking holes in TV programmes that were made more than 20 years ago is much like shooting fish in a barrel, but in some ways it's reassuring to confirm that TV hasn't dumbed down at all - it was dumbed down back then as well. 3-2-1 obligingly provides the perfect sample, being the primetime Saturday evening show of ITV in the early 80s. Your host is the legendary Ted Rogers, who was famous for.. er.. being the host of 3-2-1, and doing that thing with his fingers which we all thought was so complex at the time before we could afford video recorders with a pause button.
Three groups of contestants, first subjected to a baffling question-and-answer session on subjects as diverse as "things which are square", eventually progressed to the main part of the evening's entertainment - a selection of comedy and/or dramatic sketches, each one bringing with it a clue, a curious riddle, and an associated prize which might be something as fabulous as a car, or something as unfabulous as the legendary Dusty Bin. (Although contestants did not get to take home the expensive remote-controlled bin which existed only for the cameras, but instead, a rather more ordinary dustbin which most contestants probably discarded to avoid the complexity of getting it on the train back home.)
The prize riddles were the most inpenetrable things - designed to fox and baffle the contestants such that they had no idea whether their prize would be that fabulous car or that fabulous bin. And it's perhaps this which was the most endearing part of the show.
In one episode of 3-2-1, where the baffled contestants have just been treated to a rip-roaring French can-can number, one of the dancers comes to the stage to deliver the clue. "Ooh la la, I am from Par-ee-s", she says. "In France!", Ted Rogers helpfully explains to the baffled ITV audience.
But it's at this stage that the boom is lowered on the contestants, and 3-2-1 abandons any hint of being on their side. From now on, all prizes are hidden behind complex riddles which are nothing if not unhelpful.
A typical 3-2-1 riddle might go something like this:
I'm made of metal, but not the good kind
Inside me is something you won't want to find
This prize isn't something a sane man would pick
If you go for this one, you'll just feel so sick.
Even the perplexed ITV viewers, still reeling from the earlier Geography lesson, would at this point be asking themselves "Is it Dusty Bin?" - but what of the contestants? If convinced that this prize must be the bin, they can take the option to "reject" it. This will still leave them with several more riddles to get through, but at least they know it'll be something "good" (even if it is a set of Yorkshire Television spoons) and not Dusty Bin.
Once the contestants had decided which prize to reject, it was up to the nice Mr Rogers to open the envelope and explain the riddle in enormous depth. Here's what the contestants are hoping to hear:
"'I'm made of metal, but not the good kind' - well, if it's not good then it must be cheap, the kind of metal that you'd throw away. 'Inside me is something you won't want to find' - well, you definitely wouldn't want to find something after you'd thrown it away, into a bin perhaps. 'This prize isn't something a sane man would pick, if you go for this one, you'll just feel so sick' - well you'd certainly be insane to pick this, it's Dusty Bin! Well done, you've rejected the bin!"
Cue scenes of contestants jumping up and down, happy to have rejected the booby prize, and now certain that whatever they leave with, it must be good.
Or it could go another way.
"'I'm made of metal, but not the good kind' - well, lots of things are made of metal, and some are made of steel, and if it's not good then it might be less, or stain-less steel. 'Inside me is something you won't want to find', well, there could be some dust inside a car, perhaps, if it had been sitting in a showroom. 'This prize isn't something a sane man would pick' - well, if you were sane you wouldn't pick something up if it was two tonnes of steel, 'If you go for this one, you'll just feel so sick' - and you might feel sick if you were driving fast in tonight's star prize, a brand new Austin Allego car!... But you've rejected it. Suckers."
Heads I win, tails you lose - in some ways, it's hard not to admire that. If only 3-2-1 was still on telly.
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