Maybe viewers just don’t rate what’s on TV?

It’s been a bit of a thankless task scanning the news this week for something even vaguely suitable as the subject for a lighthearted newspaper column. Most topics will obviously be utterly trivial in the context of recent events but, sometimes, what are widely known as “First World problems” are put into even sharper perspective than usual.

But this is no reason to ignore them. “Normal” life should go on, even against the most dreadful backdrop and so, this column comes with the glaring caveat that news headlines like “Hot weather hits Saturday night TV ratings” pale into insignificance in the current climate (no pun intended).

And so, to dwell on trivia for a while, it is reported that the unexpected heatwave has hit viewing for prime time TV.

Among those affected was the launch of new BBC show Pitch Battle in which, according to the listings, “the country’s best choirs and vocal groups battle it out in a series of sing-or-be-sung-off vocal challenges”.

I’d suggest that the weather is not the problem here, more a desire to avoid the wailing histrionics that characterise much of modernday singing.

There are plenty of other places to go if you wanted to watch people shouting at each other on a Saturday night.

Faring a bit better was the return, if you ignore all the subsequent rip-offs, of old favourite Blind Date, with Paul O’Grady taking over from the late Cilla Black and doubling the Saturday night audience for Channel 5. Insert joke here.

Perhaps the BBC should take comfort in the fact that the audiences are bound to come flooding back once the more attractive option of going outside and staring at the sky disappears (probably by the time you’re reading this).