Mary Whitehouse once complained to the BBC when I manoeuvred a couple of would-be assassins into the very vat of acid that they intended as my final resting place. I was quite proud at the time.

This was when I was boldly going (oops - wrong cult) in my blue police box to places strange and unfriendly. Those hostile places often bore a startling similarity to Wapseys Wood landfill site, Gerrards Cross, which represented many an alien planet.

The self-appointed scourge of smut and violence complained because she felt the scene was too horrific for the Saturday tea-time audience. I thought it was all done in a rather tongue-in-cheek, non-graphic way and that she rather over-reacted to a bit of deliberately larger than life cliffhanger drama. But who's to say?

But she should have saved herself for the new and murky depths of TV 2000.

Of course, occasionally, in the allegedly swinging but actually rather innocent 60s, television watching with the parents did produce those wonderful moments when everyone pretends not to have noticed that there is some minor hanky-panky of a birds and bees nature going on. Father fiddles under chair for slippers. Mother talks loudly to cat. Teenage son goes bright red and feigns avid interest in the lettering on side of HB pencil, until the, ahem, funny business was over.

Recently, I found myself standing in front of the telly talking loudly and at length about the fact that wall tiles were metric now and not in rods, poles or perches, during a bed scene in some well pre-watershed soap, which would have had my father eating his slippers, mother hurling the cat at the telly and me exploding with embarrassment. This was to prevent my eight-year-old daughter from feeling obliged to express an interest in things that she has plenty of time to find out about.

Then I read the watershed is to go the way of good programmes, taste and drama.

Thank Heavens for radio.

We are living in a world where the lunatics, who seem to have bought all the shares in the asylum, are talking about instructing four-year-olds in the finer detail of activities of a connubial nature. A world where we have television programmes hosted by grinning Americans, who trumpet freedom of speech and dress a sorry gladiatorial combat up as some sort of therapy session for the fame junkies who are lured onto their shows.

There they act out their inadequacies, real or imagined, for the entertainment of the similarly sad voyeurs in the studio, who get their six seconds of fame by competing to praise the clever, cynical and very rich ex politician, who smugly and oh so compassionately sums up the whole tacky charade with a naff, moralistic homily at the end. And they're all so surprised when emotions spill off the screen and cause a very real death.

A strange blurring of reality is taking place. An Aeroflot customer care employee is now a media star and appearing in panto this Christmas. A talented actor of my acquaintance who co-starred in a successful BBC sitcom less than ten years ago is running a B&B in Bournemouth.

The proliferation of docusoaps is gradually easing drama into oblivion. I predict a day when the only audience for television will be out of work actors. Everyone else will trying to get on the telly.