Looking back at our past is now far from passé

When did this passion for anniversaries first manifest itself? It is now an industry. Every week we are reminded that it is the 100th anniversary of this battle or that death, the 50th birthday of some Act of Parliament or famous disaster. The TV documentaries flow, the dramas flourish, the full-colour pull-outs burgeon.

Could we say that this compulsion to celebrate anniversaries is inherited from our earliest ancestors? Were those cave paintings actually commissioned to mark the 50th anniversary of the invention of the spear? One hundred years after the completion of Stonehenge, I expect the Neolithic people gathered there and held a great debate about whether it had been worth the effort.

So the Bayeux Tapestry was obviously a special souvenir issue to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Then in 1695 they must have gone really big on the 30th anniversary of the Great Plague. I bet pamphlets were churned out. “Who Was to Blame?” they screeched. “Have Lessons Been Learned?” they demanded. There would be dramatic re-enactments by street performers, you couldn’t hear yourself think for all the ballads, and the printmakers worked overtime on ghoulish illustrations.

So what is next for us in the pipeline? I understand that the influential people who decide these things are considering making a big fuss next year for the 150th anniversary of 1868 when, in their opinion, nothing much happened. There will be a major BBC Two series on the theme of “Was 1868 a Blunder?” We will remember people who were born that year and turned out to be of little consequence. Parades will be arranged and then rained off. A chain of hilltop beacons will be lit and then unfortunately go out. It will be a great celebration of a time that was free of round-the-clock melodrama.

Some of the country’s finest brains are now devoted to the study of paedivegics, the science of getting children to eat their greens. Thousands of theses have been offered, one of the latest coming from Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology, who says wind-chimes provide “sonic seasoning” which makes vegetables taste sweeter to a reluctant child.

This has been received with some scepticism by paedivegician friends iends of mine, although one distinguished hed lady academic says she has had some me success by assembling trumpeters ters in the kitchen to play a fanfare when hen a boy of six agrees to consume a heavily vily disguised French bean. I gather er an oratorio in praise of the courgette ette is also planned. There are also calls alls for the Government to provide fundsnds to set up a counselling service for parentsrents who are suffering severe anxietyety attacks as a result of their child’sd’s persistent spurning of radicchio.io.

I happen to be considered too be an authority in paedivegics, havingng famously coaxed my youngestt grandson to eat a single pea. I will be delivering a paper at a symposium in Copenhagen this month when we will also discuss a proposal to destroy all worldwide crops of Brussels sprouts, on the grounds that their very existence creates the particular type of bad vibe that causes vegiphobia in children.

We are assured that there will be less sugar in this new version of the Great British Bake Off. This could set a precedent. Maybe, if the BBC considered lowering the glitter levels and sequin count on Strictly Come Danci Dancing it might have the beneficial effect of reducing national queasiness. Perhaps, also, we could do with a cut in the number of ambiguous white clouds in the weather forecasts and definitely many fewer players on the pitch for Match of the Day.

Is t there a case for fewer criminal offencesoffen to be committed in crime dra dramas? And wouldn’t it set a fine exa example to British motorists if pro programme makers cut down on the speed in car chases? Hospital dra dramas, such as Casualty, would be benefit from more nurses and few fewer patients who unnecessarily com complicate the plot lines. I would also like to appeal for smaller herds of wil wildebeest in nature programmes, as the they just put temptation in the way of the lions.