Televisions are everywhere. Look, there’s one now. See what I mean? You can’t get away from the bleeders. But it wasn't always like this. Oh, no. In fact, we were a quarter of the way through the century before the tragic lantern was fully realised. Yes my chickens, John Yogi Baird invented TV in 1925, after a struggle longer than the combined hair of Motley Crue. Finally he and his loveable assistant Booboo cracked it.

Then, as luck would have it, an English crazy-man called Lord Reith invented the BBC. It took him a matter of minutes. With little more than a bag of gold from the King and a mad building at Alexandra Palace (in London's salubrious Haringey) he set up the greatest public sector broadcaster in the world. Not bad for a chinless aristo with a name that rhymes with Bored Keith.

These things take careful planning and preparation though; he didn't just put up an aerial and start filming fresh air sonny-me-lad. No; he planned everything with the diligence of a cyclist with dysentery riding over cobblestones. After literally minutes of careful frowning he stood up and boldly shouted out his four point plan: 'to educate, to inform and to entertain; and a medium on which to show programmes about heroic dogs.'

It is the first three points that are oft quoted, but the fourth is generally cast into the filthy dustbin of yesteryear. Ironically it is the fourth that was to be the most rigidly upheld. THINK ABOUT IT. The list is more endless than a rubber band: Scooby Doo; Rin Tin Tin; Lassie; Goober and the Ghost Chasers; Dogtanian; Rebel out of Champion the Wonder Horse; etc etc etc. But the finest of all these dogs, and perhaps the most entertaining, educational and informative programme in history was to come from Canada in the early 1980's.

The Littlest Hobo followed the surprising adventures of an implausibly intelligent Alsation named the Littlest Hobo, who wandered the country, befriending people with pick-up trucks and helping them. He then systematically declined their offer to adopt him as a pet and left to continue his hobo life. Causing the truck owner to utter the following immortal edict: '…and it's all thanks to…….now where in tarnation has he gotten to?'

Among the names given to him by his human friends were Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue, and Blue. Among the names given to him by the criminals he catches are Beany, Arse-piece, Log-sniffer, Wet-knickers and Fiendish Cur.

This fantastic programme was to meet an untimely end when a smaller hobo was found, thereby making our hobo's claim fraudulent. In 1984 he was destroyed for being nothing more than a stray, worm-ridden vagrant dog.

But life goes on. Well for us it does. And so does television, but rather than being under the control of some mad English toff, it's now in the hands of far-sighted unit cost accountants and Business Affairs Lawyers, whose people will indubitably talk to your people. Yea, verily, TV is big business; and it's being run (and some say into the ground) by THE SUITS. The SUITS are a new concept: compare and contrast: