I've really enjoyed watching tonight's repeats of the programmes from the first night of C4 - I remember that first night like it was yesterday. However, I was compelled to post here as I was horrified at a couple of things. Firstly, after having just watched something as deeply touching as "Walter", I clenched my teeth in anger when the announcer could not WAIT to let us know about forthcoming programmes and HAD to talk chirpily all over the end credits, the screen of course having split down the middle to show us what was due. Could we not have been told what was coming up AFTER the credits, if indeed we really needed telling at all? How utterly insensitive...how utterly unlike the Channel 4 that started that night 25 years ago. And then of course, before the Comic Strip's sensational "Five Go Mad In Dorset", we had to hear the pre-amble of "contains lashings of political incorrectness"...really? Sorry I'm not intelligent enough to work out the irony in the programme I was about to see - good job I was warned or else I may have taken it all totally seriously....oh dear. Does anyone else feel rather sad at these signs of the times?

Here Here Brother Himself! I totally agree with you on everything you just said. Nothing infuriates me more than having the 'next programme' rammed down my neck before I've even managed to absorb the ending of the one I'm actually watching. What's the hurry? Why the incessant desperation to keep us stimulated by split screens, cocky announcers and premature advertising and 'Don't go aways'??? Sometimes I even loose track of what I've begun to watch because there's an ad break five minutes in, and loads of other programmes are advertised in between. What happened to just 2 or 3 mins of ads for products? Is it a sign of the times? People's inability to have an attention span of more than a minute before they lose interest? Is this why we're bombarded with flashing screens, split screens, announcers cracking jokes and endlessly interrupting programmes and talking over credits? I decide what I want to watch and no amount of hard sell and 'check this out' is going to make me hang around unless I was going to anyway. So yes, call me grumpy or whatever,but I'm well able to read the Radio Times and choose my own viewing, and If I don't have Radio Times available to me, I'm well prepared to look at Ceefax or Teletext, and failing that I can buy a newspaper and failing that I can look up TV listings online... I'm not in any hurry. I like my end credits, I like to absorb the music at the end of a particularly moving film or programme. I like to know who was who and who directed what. I miss TV the way it was, it was more intimate and involving and more respectful of our right to relax, wind down and absorb ourselves in one thing at a time.

It's something that annoys a lot of people, including me. It's because about 10 years ago tv execs worked out that the credits are when people are most likely to switch over. But nothing makes me want to turn off more than some burke's inane ramblings.

That aside, I'm really enjoying watching all the old programmes from way back when. Some of it's a bit trashy, but lovely and nostalgic nonetheless.