Altogether now!

I grew up in what I suppose would be called a 'musical' family. Everybody could haud a tune, as we say in Glasgow. Family gatherings involved doing a turn and loads of people had a song they were known for. My mother's was 'Scarlet Ribbons.' My father's was 'Buddy Can You Spare a Dime.' For many years, we didn't have a TV but we had a radiogram and a collection of records. Some of us could play a musical instrument. A lot of us liked to dance. One of my best memories is watching my brother, then aged about two, being danced round the livingroom standing on my mother's feet as the radiogram blasted out Spike Jones's 'Cocktails for Two' - one of the funniest recordings ever.

My brother and one of my nephews are great guitarists. The same brother and two of my nephews are fabulous singers. My brother-in-law and his brother are the kind of people that know everything there is to know about singers and groups from the 60s on. Music features in our lives every day.

What we didn't like in my family was 'audience participation'. My father called it getting the public to pay for a show and then making them do the work. Variety shows were dismissed as trash as soon as a comic or singer exhorted the audience to sing 'altogether now.' He especially loathed people like Ken Dodd and Frankie Vaughan but he loved real professionals like Sinatra and Shirley Bassey. Miming on Tops of the Pops was quite shocking to him. I can't imagine what my parents' generation would make of software that keeps singers that canny sing 'on pitch'!

I think it's sad that there are so few ways now for young people to have their talents as singers, dancers and musicians recognised. It seems you really have to 'qualify' for the X Factor or some other reality show, where your talent will be assessed by producers and - if you make it through out of the thousands auditioning - 'experts' will give purely subjective opinions and manipulate the audience in the studio and watching at home to vote for the person closest to some stereotype of the 'successful' act. Don't tell me Susan Boyle made it through. Yes she did, but how many other 'winners' from these talent shows were picked out because they were in some way different (that is, odd) and how many now languish unemployed and unappreciated after being 'bigged up' by the producers.

The celebrity shows - dancing or skating or whatever - are worse. Just a chance to reveal how little talent these people actually have through a bit of ritual humiliation. And I've noticed the clever people - David Mitchell, Jimmy Carr, Laverne Wotsit, Susan Calman, Jeremy Hardy - do not appear on these shows.

It's a relief to me to come across people who share my dislike of these shows. But I know we're in a minority. Still, if you fancy watching something on TV with a bit of originality to it, let me suggest Gareth Malone's The Choir series, especially the Workplace Choir programmes where people who like to sing but have no agenda get to sing their heads off. It's great exercise - I recommend it to everyone!