In the 1950s, the BBC had a monopoly on TV. There was one channel and no competition until ITV began in 1956. So it didn’t have to try too hard. TV was on for maybe five or six hours a day and shut down for an hour at 6pm so you could put the kids to bed. Even those few scant hours didn’t get filled, there was plenty of time left over between programmes for pre-recorded interludes to be required to fill the gaps.

One of the most famous was The Potters Wheel – it was so popular that even people of my generation, born ten years too late to have ever seen it, had heard of it. It even spawned its own reality show this year.

The other fave was The Kitten. The set up was simple enough, a camera was pointed at a white kitten who was playing on a set with a chair, a waste paper bin, a bowl of milk and a ball of wool. It was the world’s first cat video. Click here to see the whole film.