From Baird (or Farnsworth) to Bluetooth: How the Telly Left Us Behind
We inherited a telly the other day. Excellent, 4K, big screen, all that sort of stuff. Suddenly I realised we were still children of the 20th century. It was like the last time I bought a laptop and the one-terabyte disc had gone. Obviously, being in Spain, we watch Spanish telly. Except, no, we don't—mainly because most of what's on offer is truly terrible. I think they called it 'Zoo Radio' for a while: that format where an individual DJ playing individual tunes gave way to a group of people talking about how their mum pickled eggs, with the occasional song thrown in. Spaniards aren't big followers of the ping-pong conversational style of us Brits at the best of times; they prefer overlapping conversations, but with a group it just turns into a verbal brawl. And that's the very fuel of Spanish telly. So I don't watch a lot. I try the occasional series, or maybe a programme here or there that looks OK, but basically I watch the news in Spanish and that'...