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Cue music: “The first tiiime…”. Cue the lazy giraffe. “…ever I saaaaaaw your face…..”. Cue further cuddly beastie. Rising strings. Cue David Bloody Attenborough.

This all kicked off again the other night as Management and I awaited the evening news on BBC1. As Roberta Flack drew breath, I said “If she sings that fucking song again I’m going to put my foot through the screen….”

Management started to make a joke but then saw the look in my eye: she turned over, quickly.

If there is any one thing the BBC is doing to sign its own death warrant, it’s this: wasting God knows how many tens of thousands of pounds getting Tarquin and Jocasta to make arty trailers and then showing each one for a fortnight, at least, on every single programme break, on an endless loop of doom until I would sooner have my testicles attached to the rear legs of two tetchy stallions being approached by a Tesco butcher than watch the actual programme concerned.

Every time it does this – every time, and that means a lot of times – the commercial broadcasters quite rightly say: “Well we don’t have the same access to free advertising as the BBC – it’s not fair.” Every time the BBC does this, the poor viewer can only conclude that the Beeb may as well be forced to give up the licence fee and go commercial, because at least then we’d see different adverts occasionally, rather than the same sodding one ad infinitum.

Add to this the dismal spineless standard of its news reporting on television, and what would you give for the future of public service broadcasting? Take last week: national news launches into the snow story, which is covered by a chilly, but good-looking, earnest reporter on a pointless live feed from some miserable Welsh hovel in the back end of beyyyyond talking about road and rail closures and gloomy forecasts. Which roads? Which railways? What forecast? No news. But lots of pictures. Then on to Heathrow, for lots of airtime on a few hundred air travellers who are much, much more important than the millions at home wondering about fuel bills, or whether they’ll be able to commute to work in the morning.

Politics? The economy? Foreign affairs? The news seems to consist solely of finding a human interest angle – wounded but photogenic Syrian child! Bankrupt fish and chip shop owner! Funny politician! – then chucking in a quick street-filmed vox pop so we can find out what especially stupid people think is going on, then cutting to some bright Oxbridge graduate who helpfully tells us what we should be thinking about the facts in the news if only we were bright enough to understand them, but we’re soooo dim the BBC doesn’t deign to waste its time giving us plain unadulterated information. Much better to comment than inform.

As for the pitiful regional news: this has become a joke. The standard of information is abysmal, the selections seemingly arbitrary. It’s like a lottery: on what tiny community or sectional interest will we spend 10 minutes tonight; and what region-wide issue will we ignore this time?

None of this is any surprise to an old news hand: as investment and on-job training has fallen, as out-of-office reporting has become a rarity, as staff levels have been cut and cut and so increased the pressure on the re-typers and screen-watchers formerly known as journalists, so the remorseless decline has continued. But it does make me sad.

For more on this, can I recommend to you the excellent Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, as concise a chronicle of the death of British journalism as you will find.

But back to the BBC, and thank God it still puts out proper public service broadcasting, eh? But for every BBC4 documentary there’s another witless, humourless, violent police drama. For every Question Time there’s a Dale Winton, for every I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue there’s a Miranda. Mrs Brown’s Boys is funny, but it’s about as original as a rainy day in Cornwall.

Of course we can’t all watch serious stuff all the time, neither can every comedy be a Fawlty Towers: but by God, these days, when the Beeb is bad it makes ITV look arty and avant-garde; it still seems dominated by committees and graduates and the same old Oxbridge set and values, but they’ve lost their grip. So much so that when recent rows erupted, the BBC staff ran up the white flag and tearfully apologised with indecent haste.

So, to the great delight of the right, the BBC is living in its end days. To the despair of people like me, who believe great public service broadcasting is a vital necessity, the BBC is sailing spinelessly over the cliffs of doom. In fact, it’ll probably be making a reality show called Cliffs of Doom in which Dale Winton and Clare Balding push members of the BBC board selected by phone vote onto the sharp rocks below, to the ironic but carefully scripted commentary of Richard Hammond and John Bishop, while Bruce Forsyth arthritically waltzes Jordan across the dance floor to choose her latest husband from a bunch of sacked corporation reality show producers. Can’t wait for the trailer.

The solution, to me, is clear: abandon BBC television to the commercial world. It now deserves its fate. Remove the licence fee and see how long the trailer-makers and news producers can carry on treating us with contempt. But keep the licence fee – reduced, obviously – for BBC radio, and re-invest in the World Service. Public service broadcasting doesn’t have to mean Strictly Come Dancing. The radio remains the last bastion of the art. There’s a proposal to make sure it stays that way.

Sweet dreams are made of this

It being bitter January and the week with Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year, there was only one thing to do: have a barbecue.

This we did on Friday, Sister Chef and I, in shorts and Hawaiian shirts, attending to some top local produce (that’s Patrieda Produce to you – www.patriedaproduce.co.uk ) beneath a bright gazebo, visited one by one by the various barbecue-goers stirring from their warm spot by the pub woodburner.

And I’m glad we did, for thanks to Sister Chef I was able to enjoy one of life’s golden moments: the good Sister, you see, came armed with a hipflask, which she generously passed to me for the purposes of emergency refreshment.

The hipflask was stirringly warmed from being kept pressed closely and cosily to the womanly curves of Sister Chef in an inside breast – oh yes! – pocket, and contained Glen Morangie malt whisky aged in port casks.

Well. If I hadn’t been too cold to move I’d have had to go for a lie-down. I phoned Captain Kay at once, of course, my fingers trembling over the keys, and he was quite overcome with emotion, dangerously so – it’s a risk for a man of his advanced years to encounter so closely one of his life’s erotic fantasies. “Tell me,” he quavered, “when she cooks, does she have flour all the way up to her elbows….?” He took Sister Chef’s laughter for confirmation; I heard a sort of muffled whimper of joy, then silence.

Those attending had their minds on more mundane matters: was there any gee-gee in the burgers on the barbecue? No, of course not, the meat was Warren’s and the recipe Sister Chef’s own closely guarded secret.

Some Brothers were not to be convinced about the absence of nag, however. Later in the evening, the Sister handed round some of her vegetarian burgers for people to try. A Very Rickety Brother asked: “Is there any horse in these?” You just can’t get the customers.

Odds and ends

I must apologise: in all the rush last week I quite forgot to pass on this excellent spot by Sister WizardWoman, a piece by the splendid Michael Rosen addressed to the ridiculous Michael Gove: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jan/07/education-proposals-for-michael-gove?INTCMP=SRCH

Thank goodness for Brother Hamster: it seems that this cold January only he and I are present, though I know the rest of you are Out There Somewhere, all over the world. Do join in – I know the comment facility has become a bind since my website was “improved” for me, but I do miss your jibes. Well, most of them.

Finally, and back to broadcasting. Our Bony Brother and Sister were in London last week and walking past a TV studio, when they were accosted by a producer who inveigled them inside: a coachload of audience members had been caught up in the traffic chaos engendered by the Vauxhall helicopter tragedy, and so it was that our friends found themselves watching a live recording of the daytime TV show Loose Women. I’m told that our Bony Brother even strutted some of his funky stuff with Janet Street-Porter, brave chap, though this scene was apparently not transmitted. I wonder why.