h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

TV. It's kinda...well, pish, isn't it?

I don't watch it much, but right now I feel like lying there watching a wee bit of telly. A good film. Maybe something a bit edifying. A 'classic', if you will. But every time there's something like that on, it's mutilated with ads and I give up.

Match of the Day - nah. To be honest I prefer amateur football these days to the premiership.

Golf - nah. Golf should be criminalised and diamond jumpers should warrant deportation to North Korea.

Cold War drama - maybe it could be good, but I haven't been following it.

It's either the documentary about huskies racing across Alaska with vaccines - cool story, I read about that before - or the documentary about colonies of nudist witches in Dorset who make spells to stop Hitler coming back.

Good lord. Is this what it's come to?

It makes one pine for the days when Springsteen could write about '57 Channels and Nothin' On' Now it's 250 channels and all of them complete (rhymes with Great Australian Bight).

I'll be honest though, as silly as golf on television sounds, it can draw you in. I've spent a fair few late evenings listening to Peter Alliss's wonderful commentary on the BBC golf highlights broadcast. People talk with richly deserved reverence about Kenneth Wolstenholme, Brian Johnston, John Arlott, Harry Carpenter, Dan Maskell, John Snagge, David Coleman et al, but Peter Alliss was one of the funniest and most entertaining sports commentators I can think of.

I record everything, and skip the ads. Can't think why anyone would sit watching live tv these days. It skips forward 2 minutes at a time, 3 skips forward and one back (a minute back) means 5 mins of ads all the time. It used to be 12 mins per hour - watching Dave sometimes an hour program has 4 ad breaks in, instead of the old 3!

The wireless has always had better pictures, IMO Not had a TV for err, a decade or so now, and really not missing it.... I catch up with the important stuff; new Adverts, basically, at Christmas or when I'm at friend's and it does give one a delighful sense of being utterly out of touch with mainstream 'entertainment'

Mind you, the nudist witches sound interesting...

The nudist witches description was a bit misleading. They weren't witches doing spells to stop Hitler coming back. They were ones in the '40s, who projected a "Cone Of Power" at Berlin. This stopped the German army crossing the English Channel and taking over Britain.

The fact that this vital contribution to the war effort is omitted from all the WWII history books we had at school is a clear case of religious bias and discrimination, if you ask me...

Absolutely.Are you going to write the Guide Entry?

Oh, go on then, I might as well.

Good! Just what the Guide needs. More cutting-edge stuff.

This Cone of Power manoeuvre, it seems, is also what saved Britain from Napoleon, and before that the Spanish Armada. Beats me why Britain even bothers having an army!

Indeed. The UK is obviously the word leader in goat-staring technology.

There needs to be an institute. I suggest Sussex.