OK, ok, so you girls out there can be excused as this was perhaps boys' stuff, but what stuff!

Along with TOTP and A Question of Sport, Tomorrow's World was one of the holy trinity of Thursday night programmes that were essential viewing in our house.  There were us two boys and our sister, and significantly it was Dad's night in.  Mum was not really into the show; I doubt that she ever really watched it - she was usually out at Ladies' Club on a Thursday.  It was her loss then, the technological dreamworld that us boys so loved.

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But who were the presenters?  Well, first and foremost there can be no greater stalwart of the show than Judith Hann.  Having started on the show in the mid 70s, our Judith was regular, dependable and a downright safe pair of hands.  Of course she offered a glorious opportunity for parody to Pamela Stephenson, but then how many women who were on telly at the time didn't offer the same?  There 's one to ponder.

Then of course we had (my favourite) Kieran Prendiville.  Now we all know that KP (as I'm going to call him) went on to pen such classics as Ballykissangel, but he was a relatively short lived presenter on TW (as I'm going to call it from now on).  KP was the one who famously smeared jam all over a copy of the Bee Gee's CD Living Eyes.  I was upset when we found out that he had decided that this 'science lark' (my phrase) wasn't for him and he went off to write about that priest and the landlady.

Coming on to TW at the time that KP left in 1983 was Peter Macann.  Now I don't suppose that this was a coincidence.  However, Macann didn't seem to have quite the same gravitas as KP - I don't know why and it might just be my opinion but I just can't remember him.  Joining the fray (surely, team) in 1985 was Preston lad Howard Stableford.  Howard was much more to my liking.

A thin slice of Thursday evening from January 1984. Includes TW plus a trailer for Saturday Superstore followed by the start of TOTP.

He joined a team which also contained Maggie Philbin.  Now, I've a confession; I was then and I am now a big fan of Ms Philbin (sorry, can't call her Maggie, for the obvious reason).  She was, to borrow another phrase from the Young Ones, 'sweetly pretty'.  When Multi-Coloured Swap Shop finished in 1982 she had managed to escape to join TW in 1983.  She was at the time married to Keith Chegwin, another escapee from M-CSS.  As his career (and, one supposes, his life) started to nose dive, her star was in motion in the opposite direction.

And finally, perhaps the last old-school presenter of TW in the Baxter / Woollard mode was Michael Rodd.  He was a presenter between 1972 and 1982 so although he wasn't around for much of the eighties I think that he encapsulates what TW was more than any other presenter during my time watching the show.

Based upon the Inspector Morse series of books by Colin Dexter, which actually only ran to 13 stories, there were a total of 33 episodes of Inspector Morse shown on TV.  You will no doubt remember that the iconic title role was played by John Thaw - in a sublimely cerebral far cry from his earlier incarnation as DI Jack Regan in the Sweeney.

Morse was ably assisted by his side-kick DS Robbie Lewis, played by Kevin Whatley of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet fame.  In a departure from the books, the TV Lewis is (obviously) a Geordie, whereas Dexter's original characterisation has him as a Welshman.

What I liked most about Morse was the gentle pacing of the narrative.  For all its gentle pacing though, I'm sure that there was no padding, everything was vital to the plot.  The show was a metaphor for the due process of the law.  The wheels of the law grind ever so slowly, but it always seems to get its opponents - Morse seemed to do very much the same and he too always got his man (or woman).

It wasn't to everyone's taste, far from it, and I certainly remember one argument with friends at University one idle midweek night when we were arguing over what to watch on telly.  They lost that one and they never quite got over it, dubbing my hero as Inspector Morose.  Morse - Morose. Geddit!  Oh, how we laughed.

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I celebrated by '[Staying] at home and [doing] nowt.'  What larks I had. (c) Dickens, Great Expectations.

My diary entry is, on the face of it, curious or even spurious in the extreme.  I make reference to the return of a lad, who was a year older than me who had finished his time at sixth form a year previously and by now must have been happily ensconced in his chosen University.  Now he wasn't just any old 'lad' - he was in fact the son of our Maths lecturer and had been in my form.  So this was no random pestering... oh no sir.

As far as the football went, our 'house' managed a creditable joint second, or joint last... depending upon whether ones glass is half full or half empty.

At sixth form our forms were split up into three groups; let's call them houses for want of a better word.  One of the activities that was being arranged to celebrate the end of term was a three way football tournament.

A mate of mine (yes,I did have the odd one) was charged with sorting the team out for our 'house'.  In my latest diary entry, I accused him of being 'a bit slow' in getting the team sorted for tomorrow.  Bearing in mind that this was the lad who had gotten into a 'real mood' with me in February, I was probably being diplomatic in not mentioning it to his face.  Or cowardly, you decide.

I was pleased to report that I had experienced the last Maths and Physics lessons for a good while.  I did question whether or not this was good or bad news, but I don't really think that there could be much debate really...

See what utterly pointless, vacuous drivel I was capable of.

Shurely shomething more interesting was going on in the world at the time that I could have written about...?

Also, in a totally pointless jibe I wrote, 'Ha, Luton (the W*****s lost 4-1 in Simod(?) Cup Final to Reading!'  Now really, why would I be bothered to write rubbish like that, eh?

I didn't actually write down who scored the goals, but I do have a vague recollection that Town's Victor Kasule either scored or had a hand in both of the visitors' goals as they went in to half-time leading 2-0.  Of course this was a team in relegation danger, so it was perhaps no surprise that Joe Royle's men upped the ante in the second half to ensure that the spoils would be shared in a 2-2 draw.

In the first division, Liverpool enjoyed a 2-1 victory over Wimbledon in what was result-wise at least an ideal riposte to having lost for the first time the previous week.

After a long ride back home, I went to bed at 9 o'clock.  With the clocks going forward (to British Summer Time) over night this was a wise precaution.  Didn't want to be running round tired with my half hundred weight of newspapers slung over my shoulder!

In the evening, I was able to escape from the maudlin machinations of the drab denouement to my six-term stretch in tertiary education with Ben Elton and the gag-fest that was Friday Night Live on Channel 4.  I was rewarded with a good old chuckle before bedtime.