I can't believe that I'm the only thing that you're watching right now. Anyhow, I'm going to try and delight you with some of the rubbish that shaped me in to who I am today.

When I was young, my Mum used to sit me down in front of our little television and I had to watch whatever there was.
photo courtesy Jonathan DuQueno - (c) BBCNow remember. It was 1982. There were THREE television channels here in the UK, video recorders were something that would never catch on around here, and tv only started at 12 in the afternoon. Sometimes.
This had a profound effect on me. I used to gaze in awe at the little girl playing noughts and crosses with the clown and wonder if she would ever move. As the months passed, other equally profound thoughts entered my head, like,"Who is noughts and who's crosses?" I thought that the two were television. I was disappointed to learn that the clown wasn't real, and the girl is called Carol Hersee. And that the picture was first shown in 1969. Which at first led me to believe that this was the longest game of noughts and crosses ever, and whoever's turn it was, had the best poker face in the sport.
Alas. It was a photograph.

My confidence battered in the only smiling faces on British daytime TV in 1982 - remember the Falklands War, anyone - I chose to take the bold step of turning the channel over.
HURRAH! Rewarded instantly by the smiling face of...another pattern! And to me, it did seem to smile. If you were to see it, it smiles. Hang on a moment, I think I have the picture somewhere.
See! It Smiles!I think it smiles. And what exactly was that white stripe down it's forid anyway. I liked this pattern better, as it played more exciting music. I was 3 when I first stared noticing this. During these long days, there was nothing better to do than dance to the frankly brilliant tunes dished forward by the test card. I think I even gave them names. Whatever. Channel 4 (the smiley card) introduced me to classical music, and my puddled mother would dust and clean listening to the soothing sounds and I would breakdance to Mozart and Elgar. One afternoon in November 1982, I switched on to watch the smiling face and to my absolute horror, it had been replaced by programmes! There was a young Richard Whitely and a sprightly Carol Vorderman laughing and joking about being the first programme on Channel 4. I was disgusted.
Channel 4 opened the way to a whole new and exciting way to be a technical spoilt brat. Wednesdays, they used to show all of the national transmitters that were due for repair. And I USED TO WATCH THEM. Every single one. A half hour show devoted entirely to test patterns and frequencies, this made my lunchtime. So much so, Mum picked me up from school just so that I didn't miss an installment. I don't think I missed one until 1986, when I was too scared to watch television.

Oh yes. 1986. What a year. January 28th, 1986. I was 7. With healthy teeth. And with full confidence in the Western World's attempts at conquering space, and all that lay beyond. As I sat with my teeth being examined in St. Marks Road, the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger were readying themselves for a routine launch in to space. As they began the final countown, my mother and I crossed the road to my Aunty Janes. I can remember it as vividly as it was sometime last year. Children's ITV's rival to the BBC's 'Blue Peter' - 'Splash' - was interrupted by the single most ugly newscaster in the world. Telling me that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded on take off. It was then replayed to me, now in a state of shock then frenzy from every possible angle. In close up. From far away. From the left. From the right. I'm now convinced had it been 1999 instead of 1986, we would have seen inside the cockpit. Bang. Bits falling out the sky. I couldn't sleep for months. At this time I had a tv in my bedroom. I now hated it. In the dark, each time I used to roll over, I had to screw my eyes up just so as I couldn't catch a glimpse of that same explosion. Exactly two months later, Chernobyl in Ukraine exploded sending radioactive dust all over Europe. Now, that scares me more - but it wasn't nearly as much of a televisual tragedy. I occasionally still get nightmares. But not very often. Thank you for your concern.

The late eighties saw a major change in the way that the nations favourite broadcaster filled in the time during the programmes. Daytime television. But before that Richard and Judy-esque tosh, BBC used to play Pages From Ceefax. The only thing to restore my faith in the most popular medium in the world. I now knew that every tv was getting teletext. Pages of information, news, sport, television listings, music reviews, the stock markets - and engineering information. I had to have one of my own. To this day I still don't have a teletext tv of my own. I still read the football news every day. But I suppose that the internet is the teletext of the late decade.

I used to sit glued to the broadcasts of what was useless mostly, but they did have a cruicial advantage over the other test patterns - they played funkier music. (re: Lance Gambit Trio - Left Bank 2) So, already an information junkie, I was the target audience of sattelite television. I wanted to know exactly how it worked - why it was so cool, and why we couldn't get it as soon as possible. Six years after Sky began broadcasting (with a teletext service all of it's own) we recieved cable. Bang. 56 channels of news, sport, news, Spanish, German, and news. I was hooked. I also began reading the German teletext on Sat 1. Wow. And that helped my German immensely.

So, this brings us careering towards the advent of digital television. The picture at the top of the page was captured on the last time that the testcard was ever shown on the BBC, in 1997. The exciting music, the pages from Ceefax, the noughts and crosses were relpaced with...BBC News 24. I'm not sure whether to be happy or be sad; for I have the only thing that could replace it, more information.

I wonder what it would cost to set up a digital channel that only showed the test card. And played the music. That would be cool.