the goggle-box

However, Fox TV executive Ward Platt said the rise of the tablet and smartphone was good for the goggle-box. He said: "We are now sitting in front of the television with another device and interacting with what's on the television screen."

"Say what you like about Her Majesty," quoth one denizen of the Red Lion as he raised a glass to the goggle-box, "but she's 86 and spent four hours in the freezing rain on the banks of the Thames waving to passing boats.

But for those residents of the Second City who didn't fancy a night in front of the goggle-box there was quite a showdown in prospect at St Andrew's.

I started off watching like it was the goggle-box equivalent of the Second Coming, before the likes of Boardwalk Empire bored me and I walked out of the front room.

But the goggle-box has so far been only a medium, albeit an increasingly controlling one.

2 REPORTING the Cadbury deal on an ITV Midland news bulletin, one reporter claimed the fate of the company reminded him of a famous quote from American author, Ernest Hemingway: "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Good to see journalistic standards remain high on the goggle-box. Hemingway wrote a novel called For Whom The Bell Tolls, but appropriated the title from a line from English poet John Donne.

There will be chores which will require doing and you possibly can't imagine I will do everything on my own, while he contentedly watches the "news" on the goggle-box with feigned interest, all the while munching on crackers and cheese.

So telly cold turkey isn't the ordeal I initially feared and while I'm not quite ready to scrap the goggle-box yet, I'm perfectly happy to pull the plug when the ads are the only entertainment going.

The son became one of the most famous faces on the goggle-box, through his part as Inspector Neil Goss in Z Cars, the BBC police series set in Newtown, a new Liverpool estate based on Kirkby.

The reason is that I am quite scared by the whole array of choice and my ability to sit in front of the goggle-box for many hours without moving as it is, without having the temptation of more programmes around to keep me riveted.

But ideal PSNI people, the goggle-box is telling us, are dizzily happy teenagers who enjoy grinning at each other, you, me and themselves in front of mirrors.

Tonight Michelle and Sean and their three daughters, Laura-Ann, 11, Sharna, 12, and Danielle 15, invite us to watch their story of how they coped without the goggle-box.

"With the TV there, it was a case of dropping the clothes over her head while she gazed at the goggle-box." Gavia also enjoyed Blue Peter, Shop Till You Drop and a couple of science programmes.

They never leave our side, entertain the masses on the big screen (Uggie in The Artist) and on the goggle-box (Moose in Frasier), hardly ever complain and fill our world with much-needed companionship if we are alone or feeling downbeat.

STARMAN @ Barfly, Cardiff (Friday) IF you've ever spent so much as five minutes in slack-jawed dumbfoundment at an episode of Pineapple Dance Studios on the goggle-box, then Andrew Stone will need no introductions.