I love BBC4

But then I'm exactly the kind of arty, pretentious bumboy it's aimed at.

Tonight it had the most brilliant documentary, Meet the British, entirely constructed from archive footage of public information films from the fifties to the eighties, many aimed at educating those tricky foreigners in the ways of the British. From shots of London Airport crawling with little state of the art propeller planes where soon Concorde would be roaring to outrageously sexist shots of wives being stupid in jazzy prints this was compelling and beautiful stuff, a really terrific bit of research by Jeff Simpson, who, best of all, forbade the usual smug, cliche-ridden voice over that ruins all of these sorts of things (cf that recent gardening documentary on BBC2, How Britain Got the Gardening Bug). I hope there's more of these lined up, I could watch this sort of sad, absurd, faded film all day.

And it was followed by We Need Answers, the new Shooting Stars-esque game show awkwardly hosted by the usually adorable but somewhat out of his depth Mark Watson, pitting two celebrity experts against each-other with surreal audience questions on their specialist subjects. It was a shambles and fell to bits a bit at several points, but the low-fi Open University nature of the show allowed that as part of the format. There was an overuse of music and singing, but I still rather liked it, especially Tim Key's pompous turn as the question-master in his remote controlled armchair, looking like a cross between the Buggles and Cyril Fletcher, and a deadpan Alex Horne's rubbish powerpoint clunking along amusingly in the background.

Now there's Murray being particularly brilliant in Flight of the Conchords, with his worrying friendship obsession ('we could hang out like friends in that programme Friends about friends'), and crazed Mel's song about her even more worrying dreams. [YELLOW PAGES VOICE] Good old BBC4...

Hero Corner No.1: David Nobbs

A couple of years back I had the absolute pleasure of meeting one of the best TV writers there's been: David Nobbs. He created The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, A Bit of a Do and Fairly Secret Army among others, and was a regular contributor to all of the satire boom sketch shows right through to The Two Ronnies. It was at a book reading, and he was incredibly interesting, talking through his career highs and lows and giving advice about how to write and what makes a joke work.

It is, of course, Perrin that he shall remain known for, and rightly so. He created an archetype of the mid-life crisis executive that we all on some level can sympathise with. Certainly even as a small kid watching it I felt that I understood Reggie's plight: the bullying, the tedium, the fantasies, the increasing inability to control himself, the desire for re-invention and violent change. My dad was a car mechanic, not an office worker, and the whole situation was alien to me, but for some reason this crazed, unhappy and very, very funny man struck a chord and I find that thirty years later I'm still obsessed with him. Reggie is my role model: I am a middle-aged office worker trapped in a routine and a lovely suburban existence, and part of my brain is desperate to leave my clothes on a beach and start again. My heart breaks whenever I hear him do his doomed, drunken speech 'Are We Getting Our Just Desserts?'. I went to just such a godawful and pointless conference today, and it brought it all flooding back to me:

'We are told that we need more growth: 6% per year. More chemicals to cure more pollution, caused by more chemicals. More car parks for more tourists who want to get away from more car parks. More food, to make us more fat, to make us use more slimming aids, to make us take pills, to make us ill, to make us take more pills, to make more profit. More boring speakers, making more boring speeches, at more boring conferences. But what has all this growth done for me? Well, I'll tell you. One day I'll die, and on my grave it will say: "Here lies Reginald Iolanthe Perrin. He didn't know the names of the trees and the flowers, but he knew the rhubarb crumble sales figures for Schleswig Holstein."'

Apparently Nobbs is working on a new version of Perrin with Simon Nye, to star Martin Clunes. I have mixed feelings about this. I want a new generation to discover Reggie, especially at the moment, when like the seventies, everything is crumbling around us. His story is timeless and shouldn't be put away in a box along with the Bay City Rollers and the three day week. However, the original series must surely be definitive? Leonard Rossiter is a thousand times more heartbreaking than your average tearjerker and has a harsh quality which Clunes does not possess. In my head I'm seeing him as less the sharp, birdlike Perrin of yore than a lumbering annoyed bear. Of course, Clunes may be brilliant, and I hope he is, as Perrin, and David Nobbs, deserve nothing less.

News just in: Friends still sucks

Friends. That nineties American dream of tediously kooky white people drinking coffee and spewing a relentless barrage of smug one-liners just won't go away. As if constant repeats and threats of a film (surely more likely now that Sex and the City made the leap) aren't bad enough the cast keep trying to have careers outside of their sterile little bubble. Lisa Kudrow was the only one I liked, and she's secured an indie film afterlife for herself. The gawky one now wants to be in Lost, the stupid one had his own (thankfully doomed) spin-off for a while and the one with the hairdo spends her life on various high profile chat-shows and press junkets telling the media to leave her alone as she's a very private person.

But the really evil one was Ross. Ross. To be spat with all of the venom of Pauline from the League of Gentlemen. Ross. Not content to boil in the ooze of his own shitness he's now doing serious damage to the career of Simon Pegg, delightfully funny star of Spaced, and latterly two godawful films with David Schwimmer - Big Nothing, in which they co-starred, and the truly witless Run Fatboy Run, which Schwimmer directed. Someone needs to stop Ross before he brings down other British sitcom stars with his ham-fisted comedy ways.

One thing particularly struck me today as I watched the Corrie omnibus (bit of a leap, stay with me). Harish Patel, who gave an unwatchable and inexplicable performance in Run Fatboy Run as the supposedly comedy landlord is currently giving a sweet, funny turn as Umed in Corrie alongside the constantly insane Dev. Who's to blame for this discrepancy in Patel's performance? Ross. And proof, if it were needed, of the superiority of Corrie over Friends any day of the week.