Mrs Slocombe's pussy - Stuart Jeffries

'The Fever Pitch of telly.' Scotland on Sunday

`Like Linus' blanket in Charlie Brown, like breast fixations among men in their fifties, television can become an embarrassing addiction.' But for most of us, sitting in our living rooms looking for an excuse not to talk to each other of a Thursday night, a million million miles away from moon landings and Cold War tension and third world famine, it is this addiction to a queer little flickering box in the corner that has shaped our lives since the late 1950s.

'Whether writing about newsreaders as sex symbols (Angela Rippon's legs) raunchy adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (spillingly implausible bosoms) or Brideshead Revisited (privileged decadents swilling champagne and eating plover's eggs), Jeffries' scintillating humour conveys serious and thought-provoking ideas in this hilariously Proustian, witty, entertaining and wholly idiosyncratic study of growing up with television.' Daily Mail