THE ADVENTURES OF SIR PRANCELOT Notable by its depressing absence from all television theme and library music compilations issued to date, the main theme from John Ryan's animated five-minute tales of a bumbling knight was not quite the medieval pomp that you might normally expect. For the bizarre choice that filled this role was Alan Parker's 'Magic Carpet Man', a rumbling blast of Lemon-Pipers-meet-early-Teenage-Fanclub electric sitar-festooned pop. To complicate matters still further, the series continued the Childrens' BBC tradition of making one instrument sound like a completely different other (for example, the way that in "Trumpton" an entire brass band always sounded like a lone flamenco guitar), as the end credits featured a jester strumming along to the rockin' number... on a lute. There is probably little truth in the rumour, however, that this was a direct inspiration on Jimmy Page's blend of medieval plainsong and modern rock guitar.

BLANKETY BLANK The genesis of a thousand game show-related nightmares about sofa-haired presenters wielding microphones that bore a disturbing resemblance to knitting needles, "Blankety Blank" was among friends in the world of game shows, in that, true to form, absolutely nothing whatsoever seemed to happen in it. From the Terry Wogan originals through the days of Les Dawson and up to the more recent Lily Savage-helmed revival, viewers sat transfixed by predictable questions ("Postman Dawson was never very good, he always forgot his BLANK"), celebrities writing answers that made no sense on pieces of beige card, and contestants qualifying for the hallowed 'Supermatch Game' and winning the Holy Grail-like Blankety Blank chequebook and pen without actually seeming to play the game in any way, yet still nothing ever happened. Nonetheless, the theme tune (lyrics: "Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank" etc) did mark an early appearance by the soon-to-be-ubiquitous earwax-shifting 'squiggly' synthesiser, an aurally-torturing hallmark of 1980s television. Following its pioneering appearance on "Blankety Blank" (the opening 'sting' alone must have taken five days to program in late 1970s technology), other notable users of the 'squiggly' included the long-forgotten Noel Edmonds vehicle "Whatever Next?", and the tedious divorce sitcom "Don't Wait Up". That above mention of the series is probably the only way in which the odious Nigel Havers will ever find his way into this publication.

GARDENER'S WORLD A mere fifteen seconds of sweeping, spiralling orchestral bliss, lost at some undefinable cultural point between the 1920s and 1970s, which actually almost made up for the fact that "Gardener's World" always overlapped the timeslot of a comedy series that you were waiting for by seven minutes. Almost, but not quite. Disappointingly, the new 'trendy' Alan Titchmarsh-associated version of the show has long since ditched the glorious original theme in favour of a weird piece that appears to be coaxing feedback from acoustic instruments. And we thought that those green-fingered types were supposed to rail against interfering with nature.