PC Plum likes it up the...nursery

I had no idea kids TV had become so creepy.

Jamie decided to stir around 6.15am again today and, after three quarters of an hour trying to get him back down, Vanessa mentioned that Teletubbies was on Cbeebies at 7am on weekends. This I could cope with.

I was working in Westminster when Teletubbies first hit our screens back in 1997 and I'm not ashamed to admit that, at one stage, it formed part of my daily routine. I had a telly in my office and, unless something more exciting was happening at 10am, on went BBC2. As a result, there's not a thing I don't know about Tubby Toast or Tubby Custard. Perhaps it's best we leave it at that.

Anyway, after Teletubbies finished (in case you missed the end, it was Po who spilt the Tubby Custard), the Cbeebies presenters came on our screen including a woman with only one hand - apparently the parents have been complaining.

And then it was time for Balamory - have you seen this? It centres on a Scottish nursery attended by a gathering of children from politically correct heaven and staffed by a woman with silly hair, enormous teeth and a thick Highlands accent. The latter started me off on the wrong foot - I mean, how am I going to make Jamie speak with a Norn Iron lilt if he keeps being exposed to all these other silly brogues? I'm already fed up telling Yorkshire folk to shush every time they come anywhere near him.

So, off goes silly woman with her indecipherable smiley ramblings before the door knocks and on the other side is PC Plum. If you've seen Balamory, I need say no more. But if you haven't, well, where does one begin?

Let me put it this way, I think he probably gets more out of putting on his uniform than any other part of his policeman day. Unless he has a shower back at the station. Camp as a row of fat tents. Wearing scarves. Knitted by their mums. Hopefully you've got it.

Right, so in minces PC Plum to announce plans for his new campaign - making Balamory hunkydory (with the emphasis on hunk, from his point of view). To cut a very long story short, he delighted in giving some man a finger-wagging telling off for being messy, then someone apparently nicked his bike (yea!), then it turned up (boo!) with flowers in its carrier basket (bleugh!) Then the big toothed nursery woman came back on the scene, blurted out some rubbish in Scottish before the PC parents arrived to take their shiny sprogs home.

I'm really not convinced this sort of thing is good for my development, never mind Jamie's. But, at 7.30am tomorrow, I might just check once again.

Between now and then, it's Wales v Ireland with Ireland going for the Grand Slam. The Guinness and the toilet rolls are in and everything is crossed.