That's yer lot you slag!

I see ITV is to axe The Bill after 27 years - and about time too in my opinion.

They should have called a halt to it in the mid-to-late 90s when Frank Burnside moved on. It used to be must-watch TV but in the 90s it became apparent there were more psychotics and criminals working FOR the police in Sun Hill than on the streets of Canley.

Instead of giving us an idea of what was it like to be pounding the streets it turned into Emmerdale for Plod. It was yet another sad indictment of the way TV was heading, pandering constantly to the lowest common denominator.

I bet you didn't realise that The Bill was partially responsible for the rise in popularity of rubbish like I'm Desperate for Publicity Look at Me. But that's the sort of inside info you get when you read this blog...

PS My The Bill claim to fame is that I went to school with the guy who played PC Able (Mark Haddigan) and that one of my mates went to school with Jim Carver (Mark Wingett) who broke my mate's ankle while playing football. Tenuous or what?

ITV drama is brought to you in association with scepticism

Last night saw the beginning of the last series of Midsomer Murders on ITV.

And though I've been something of a regular viewer - it's very easy to sit through - I think they're right to pull the plug. It really is showing its age.

There are far too many flaws in the plot and increasingly I find myself saying to SWMBO "Why the hell doesn't he just (insert whatever he should doing here)?"

And, even if you put aside the natural scepticism which would make you wonder how there are possibly any residents left in the small county of Midsomer, one is always faced with the inevitability that DI Tom Barnaby's wife, Joyce, and daughter, Cully, will be involved with the victims and the perpetrator somehow.

This inevitability seems to follow around John Nettles - who has played Barnaby for 12 years - as the same scenario was present in Bergerac, which ran from 1981-1991. Without fail, when a crime was committed you needed to simply find out who was staying with Jim's father-in-law, Charlie Hungerford, or who he'd just gone into business with. And there was the murderer / fraudster / drug dealer.

Getting a detective on the case was uneccessary. All that was needed was to have somebody monitoring Charlie's diary and you could stop a crime before it was committed.

If I lived in Midsomer the last thing I would do would be to attend a fete / choir / cycle ride / charity event involving either of the female Barnabys for it was certain somebody would meet an untimely end and I would end up either as a suspect or a mute bystander encouraged to smile inanely when somebody purporting to be a neighbour hove into view.

One would experience the same emotions if one had saved up to have the holiday of a lifetime only to find, when having high tea in the foyer of the luxury hotel, Hercules Poirot or Miss Marple checking in at reception.

You just know everything's about to go Pete Tong.