Mary Whitehouse right about the BBC and UK TV all along - who would have guessed it?

The late Mary Whitehouse, the Christian campaigner against obscenity, was viewed as an antiquated joke figure in the 1960s and 70s. She complained about the swearing on Till Death Us Do Part, so the writer, my old friend Johnny Speight, had Alf Garnett support her. Pornographer David Sullivan launched a soft-porn mag called Whitehouse; the BBC sent her up as Mrs Felicity Smallgood in comedy-drama Shizzlewick. And even Deep Purple taunted her with their song Mary Long... But BBC4's Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story reminded us that Mary was spot-on about porn, paedophiles, and the BBC's smug aloofness.

The then Director-General Hugh Greene actually said, "We are going to use this organisation to change the way the rest of the country thinks. We want them to see stuff they don't like. We don't really care if they complain." Nothing has changed...

Mary was like Canute trying to stop the tide. But as author Ben Thompson said, her "smoke alarm was set very high, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a real fire." Whitehouse was, as feminist Beatrix Campbell pointed out, prescient in other fields, particularly where children and women's freedoms were concerned. Naturally she received death threats, verbal abuse, and assaults. University students once lowered an effigy of her on a rope as she addressed a debate.

BBC2's Politics Live Conference 2025 was depressing. Robotic Reeves, whinging Starmer...where are today's equivalents of Benn and Bevan, Churchill and Powell? Where's the oratory?

Starmer accusing Farage of lacking patriotism was like hearing Michelle Mone accuse Sarah Mullally of flawed judgment. Remind me, PM, whose government reveres Euro courts, neglects our borders, squanders our money (Chagos), allows Sharia courts to flourish, and is inching us back into the EU? A sharp TV satirist would have fun with that. Shame there aren't any. BBC Verify are always on-hand to dissect Reform's policies. Who decided Starmer's desperate rhetoric was not their business?

Even BBC1 occasionally gets something right. In Blue Lights Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson have created a superior thriller with a real sense of place, pace, well-drawn 3D characters, and genuine jeopardy. Set in Belfast, these Northern Irish peelers have realistic relationships, and, like all emergency services, plenty of banter (I'd like it darker). Cocky PC Shane Bradley (Frank Blake) is a rule-bender who flirts shamelessly with a nurse. "Just following a lead," he says he tells oppo Tommy Foster. "You should be on a lead," he replies.

They even party with Buckfast Tonic Wine - "Lurgan champagne."

They've moved on from sectarian gangs with the writers upping the stakes to the murky world of organised crime. A risky gamble. A Dublin cocaine crime gang has taken over from local pushers, with a high-tech app that delivers Colombia's finest as efficiently as Uber Eats.

They also run a private club for middle-class professionals. The two worlds overlap when one obnoxious berk indulges in too much 90%-pure Devil's Dandruff and suffers a "coke stroke", creating problems for Cathy Tyson's club boss Dana Morgan and wolfish wide-boy gangster Donal Fogerty, a kind of homicidal Irish John Bishop.

New character Paul "Colly" Collins, is a C3 intelligence officer pursuing the app. It all ends badly for Donal's delivery boy Sandy McKnight, who plummets to his death in front of coupled cops Steve and Gracie - she knows Sandy's endangered pal Lindsay from her social worker past. Odds on this won't be the only death this series. Let's hope there's more for Andi Osho's Sandra Cliff to do now she's skipper. I still miss her ex, Gerry, tragically gunned down in 2023.

Where I'm Alan Partridge was a cringe-comedy triumph, BBC1's How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge) was simply trying. Partridge cynically tries to revive his TV career by presenting "Britain's first-ever documentary about mental health". Sadly, Coogan's current co-writers aren't as savage, sharp or side-splitting as Iannucci and Baynham were.

TV irritations abound: pop-science docs involving unnecessary foreign travel that we pay for, ITV's Big Brother - why bother? - and Mastermind's Clive Myrie referring to the Turner Prize as "prestigious". It isn't. It's a joke.

Staying with dubious arty types, Waldemar Januzczak presented Art's Most Erotic, looking like he'd eaten half the budget before shooting started. Waldy, 71, went from Indian orgy statues to Japanese Shunga porn, enjoying every minute. "You should get an Olympic medal for doing that" he gasped at one unlikely scene. Somewhere, the ghost of Harold Steptoe was muttering, "You dirty old man."

Finally, never mind going undercover at the Met, Panorama should covertly film BBC bosses. Wouldn't you like to know what they really think of us? It's a shame they're not elected; few would ever work again. They aren't so much dancing on the Titanic as steering it straight at the iceberg, flat out at 24 knots.