Penelope Keith's right, we are, sadly, witnessing the slow death of family TV viewing

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The actress Penelope Keith bemoaned the death of family TV in an interview this week. Certainly there are no sitcoms today comparable to those that made her name The Good Life and To The Manor Born.

Why? Because, as she points out, in those days producers didnt have to fill in forms saying which audience they were targeting. It was commissioned just because it was good.

She went on to lament the compartmentalisation of life today, with adults and children in separate rooms to watch different programmes or play computer games. Shes right, of course but I truly believe that if there were more programmes aimed at the whole family, wed all make a point of watching them as a family.

Thing of the past? Families sitting down to watch an evening's TV doesn't appear to happen any more due to 100s of channels showing poor quality shows

Looking back over my own childhood in the Seventies, I can count more than 30 programmes that my parents and I regularly sat down to enjoy together. As well as those starring Ms Keith, there were plenty of decent sitcoms such as Are You Being Served?, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Terry And June, Man About The House and It Aint Half Hot Mum.

There was fantastic drama, too The Duchess Of Duke Street, The Saint, Upstairs Downstairs and brilliant entertainment, from The Morecambe & Wise Show and The Two Ronnies to The Generation Game.

My own children are not so lucky. Despite state-of-the-art technology plasma screens, Sky+, and more than 100 digital channels on any given night theres almost nothing worth watching, just an endless menu of pointless reality shows, cookery programmes and s! ub-stand ard soaps.

In the past decade the highlights of our family viewing have been as follows: The Vicar Of Dibley, Only Fools And Horses, My Family, Doctor Who, Outnumbered, Miranda and, of course, Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor.

Unhappy: Penelope Keith has bemoaned today's TV and the lack of programmes which cater for the family

Of these, three are now history. That leaves just five worthwhile family programmes. Its hardly what youd call progress. (Id include Downton, The Apprentice and Young Apprentice were it not for one big problem: they all start after 9pm, which is too late for anyone under 12 or 13 the night before school.)

So whats gone wrong? First, theres a mistaken belief that because people in their late teens and 20s are the future, they must be aggressively targeted. In fact, most young people spend their free time going out. Its the elderly, the middle-aged and children who watch television most and always has been.

Second, the powers that be long ago decided that there was no such thing as universal family audiences, just countless small minorities only interested in their own niche TV. The success of Downton until it descended into pot-boiler parody and Strictly show how wrong this thinking is.

And third, TV has become a lucrative, fashionable industry where many young people hope to find work. So TV executives tend to hire Oxbridge graduates with impressive degrees but zero experience of the wider world.

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Unfortunately this too often results in a deadly mix of cultural arrogance, creative inertia and commercial greed, which produces dreadful television that either bores, offends or condescends. What super-graduates fail to understand is that people want entertainment thats clean and funny, not salacious and crude.

The other problem is that many programmes are now too lo! ng in or der to justify both their stars over-inflated salaries and the over-extended commercial breaks. The X Factor, already jaded, goes on for an hour-and-a-half on Saturday (with a further hour on Sunday); Strictly is only five minutes shorter.

One solution would be to bring the news back to 9pm. This would force schedulers to make shorter programmes that start earlier. After all, most of the great shows in the Seventies were on before the news, which provided a clear demarcation line as a reminder that it was time to send the children to bed. They went willingly, too because they knew all theyd be missing was that decades equivalent of Huw Edwards droning on about the eurozone crisis.

Britons want nothing more than to watch TV together. What we desperately need are TV executives with the ability to identify with large audiences and the creativity to provide it.

The thousands of anguished words this weekend from former euro believers who are now recanting boil down to what always seemed obvious to the rest of us: Why did anyone ever believe that Greece, Italy and Spain would be any more self-disciplined within the euro than they were before they joined it?

All the rage: Tights which look like suspender belts are the latest trend

Suspending belief

Suspender belt tights, as sported by Rihanna (right), are all the rage a trend that men find particularly puzzling. Why wear tights that look like black stockings, they ask petulantly, when you could be wearing the real thing?

Its a good question. For while theres no doubt most women find real stockings exceptionally uncomfortable, their allure is at least dependent on a hint of hidden promise. Unlike the tights, which are about as seductive as a service station sandwich and look just as cheap.

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So m! any peop le want to see the Leonardo da Vinci Exhibition at the National Gallery that far from getting the optimum ten minutes contemplation (as recommended by curator Luke Syson) in front of each masterpiece, visitors instead have just 20 seconds.

With tickets at 16 each, thats a pretty poor show. Opening hours are 10am to 6pm, with a 10pm closure on Fridays and Saturdays, and 7pm on Sundays. Thats not good enough. They should open at 7am and close at midnight.

Not the marrying kind

Were told by a friend of Pippa Middletons that her now ex-boyfriend Alex Loudons parents were appalled by the publicity she attracted.

Theyre said to be very old-fashioned and didnt think she was wife material.

Perhaps unlike Charles and Camilla, whose adoration of Pippas sister Kate is abundantly clear they simply couldnt cope with the idea of a daughter-in-law whose mother is a former air hostess.

Possibly they find the royals themselves rather infra dig all that Tupperware! and, what with Sophie Wessex, Tim Laurence and the Duchess of Cambridge all appearing on a balcony on Remembrance Sunday, hideously middle class.

Just when I thought Tess Dalys dresses on Strictly couldnt get any worse (theyre always too short, and invariably unflattering) she turned out on Saturday night in a hideous green sparkly number that made her look like a giant Quality Street. Only without the quality.

Im sure Charlie Gilmour, released yesterday four months into his 16-month sentence for swinging from the Cenotaph flag in the student protests last year, has learned his lesson. It would be good if he now went on to prove he has, by volunteering at a British Legion nursing home in his spare time.

Sheila Hancock has lost two stone simply by eating less and giving up her nightly glass of wine, which she says she doesnt miss at all.

In my experience theres no one more irritating than the evangelical, newly-converted non-drinker. I suspect Ms Hancock might soon find invitations to dinner begin drying up even faster than she is.

I used to love watching him he made me laugh, wept Fatima Whitbread when she learned fellow Im A Celebrity contestant Freddie Starr had been taken to hospital.

And its only now that weve learned the unremittingly grim details of her unhappy childhood that we can appreciate just how much that laughter must have meant to her.

Shes a thoroughly good sort brave, cheerful and thoughtful. I do so hope she wins.

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