Aidan Smith: Why all our children should watch The Likely Lads

The children of the 60s and 70s were forced to watch shows like The Likely Lads, Civilisation and Horizon writes Aidan Smith

The day Rodney Bewes died the results of a poll to find Britain’s “best-loved” sitcom were announced. Only Fools and Horses won it, Fawlty Towers was second and Blackadder third – but Bewes’ Likely Lads didn’t even make the top 20.

Possibly Bewes from beyond the grave would think that just typical. He didn’t have much luck after his show ended, turning up at the BBC to hustle for work on a bicycle rather than the Bentley he drove at the height of his fame, and was reduced to taking a job as spokesman for the British Onion Marketing Board. There was an almighty fall-out with his co-star James Bolam who vetoed re-runs, depriving Bewes of repeat fees and doubtless some votes in that poll.

Because The Likely Lads isn’t shown on the golden oldie channels it’s possibly slipped from the collective memory, though I don’t know why because it was brilliant. If you were a child of the 1960s or 1970s you watched pretty much everything on TV. There wasn’t a lot – only two channels, later three – and not very much was tailored for children. So you watched what your parents watched.

Did this do me any harm? I went on to Youtube after the sad news about Rodders and revved up some classic episodes. One of them had Terry, played by Bolam, taking the names of Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Longford in vain. This reminded me that I knew who these guys were when I was the same age as my son now. The kind of TV I watched – had to watch – could bore, alarm, confuse and cause you to blush with embarrassment, and I’d have to blame my pink cheeks on the three-bar electric fire. But it was also educational. You learned stuff. I wasn’t a swotty child like the annoying know-it-alls with the plastered-down hair on the quiz show Ask the Family, but at least I knew what “intellectual” meant because the word turned up in the theme tune for one of the few aimed-at-kids programmes, Topcat,andilookeditupina dictionary. Who uses dictionaries anymore?

Would my own children know the names of the modern equivalents of Muggeridge and Longford, the pre-eminent fun-reduction officers of today? No, and that may be partly my fault as a parent, but I stand, helpless and appalled, in the face of a teenybop televisual tsunami. Kids have more than enough shows of their own now; they no longer have to watch Civilisation, a 13-part history of art and philosophy presented by an unsmiling man in fearsomely stout tweeds.

In this infantilised age, everyone on TV tries to look younger than they are. Regardless of whether they work for the vast empire of dedicated children’s programming, they’ll be sporting skinny jeans and wacky hair. What is the opposite of infantilised? My generation was adultised. Maybe the term doesn’t exist but it could still have turned up on Call My Bluff, the word-based panel game which made absolutely no concessions to kids but which we watched anyway.

As well as Call My Bluff and Civilisation, we tuned into Man Alive and Horizon, shows for adults with adult concerns.

We watched those debates with Muggeridge and Longford which positively groaned with TC’S intellectualism. Bernard Levin was another highbrow fixture of the time – not to be confused with Bernie Winters, Mike’s goofy brother.

We watched Alan Whicker’s