... but not when it comes to TV. Are you fed up with all the endless ways they have of stretching and re-using material?

Once upon a time, we used to look forward to honest repeats of good programmes, then we became resigned to frequent repeats of mediocre ones. But today, programme makers are much cleverer. I started making a list of some of the tactics they use: I am sure you can come up with more.

1. Revisited programmes (not Brideshead though). Show 90% of a programme - usually something lifestyle related - then tack on 5-7 minutes of new stuff at the end, showing how they got on in the months or years since first transmission. Kevin, Phil and Kirsty - own up. What is especially sneaky is the way they make a short run of new programmes and put some of these in to make up.
2. Cut and paste: again, often lifestyle programmes snipped up into tiny digestible segments and glued together again with newly filmed links. The fact that the presenters wear different clothes and the seasons change unpredictably is a dead giveaway (as is the sudden pregnancy, or not, or the female ones!). 'Omes under the 'ammer hang your head in shame (and me for accidentally watching it!)
3. Stretched thin - almost to breaking point. BBC Countryfile is a good example: it used to be 30 minutes of new programming, but now stretches, like old knicker elastic, to fill an hour. The 30 mins of original programming is eked out by repeated segments from years ago (cleverly not quite identified as such); by John Craven telling us what he's going to tell us next, or what he's just told us before, or what is going to be on later; by plugs for other BBC output; and come the end of the year, shameless five minute plugs for their b****y photographic calendar.
4. Spinoffs using remnants that didn't get into the real programme. We only have 4 channels here, thank God, but those of you with digital TV will be able to pore over all those bits that weren't good enough to make it into the primetime programme, on another channel. One example being touted currently is Trade Secrets, a Twelfth Night turkey curry to Grand Designs' Xmas roast dinner.

>> Part II

About two weeks ago, there was a piece on our local news programme, BBC Spotlight, about Norrie Woodhall - who is, at 101 years old, one of the last people alive who knew Thomas Hardy. All very interesting.

Then at lunchtime yesterday, the national news picked it up. And at teatime, Spotlight again reported that Norrie had been on the national news. Talk about incestuous.

All this ties in rather neatly with a rather good interview I heard on Radio 4 on Saturday. (Here is the link to the RealAudio clip, which should be around for a month or two I hope.)

John Humphreys spoke to Tim Gardam (now an Oxford professor, formerly director of programmes at Channel 4) about the current state of TV in Britain (which Bob Geldof had previously summarised, in his inimitable way, as "dumbed down crap").

Prof. Gardam spoke at some length on the current rehashing of the same old formulae instead of adventurous, creative TV: as he said, today, TV is less a window on the world than a mirror re-reflecting TV values endlessly.