Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Get a life, mate. Still Game is fantastic and, on the basis of the first couple of episodes of the new series, is getting better all the time. That Jack and Victor like a dram is not in doubt. Neither is the fact that, whilst they may not be able to do right for doing wrong, their hearts are always in the right place.

And anyway, it’s a comedy and, as such, its primary concern is to raise chuckles, something it manages to do very successfully. The suggestion that two fictional characters are representative of an entire nation of five million people is preposterous.

The dialogue occasionally strays into the unbelievable and many of the slapstick skits can be seen a mile off but on the whole Still Game is wonderfully written and populated by fantastic characters.

And it is the introduction and expansion of the supporting cast which has seen Still Game get better and better over the years. The Jack and Victor sketches were a highlight of Chewing the Fat but the pair have really came into their own since they were given the likes of Navid, Isa and Winston to bounce off. (Something Peter Kay would have done well to consider when penning Max and Paddy)

Greg Hemphill and Ford Keirnan’s creations exude a genuine warmth and the combination of physical comedy, one-liners and Glasgow patter is a winning one.

Old age pensioners head butting horses, porn star barmen and a fake leg being used as a piggy-bank — sometimes the ridiculous is sublime.

They’re gone, do you hear me, they’re gone! Dancing in the streets wouldn’t be an overreaction because, after two years of humiliating Scottish football, Sarah O and Julyan Sinclair have finally been given the boot from Scotsport.

Okay, so Jim Delahunt is still there but the pair responsible for driving a generation away from our national game are now seeking alternative employment.

The zany sketches were embarrassing. The over-familiar patter was cringe-worthy and the whole show so amateurish you couldn’t believe anyone ever believed the format to be workable. The first ever episode, which featured Graham Speirs playing an Elton John song on a grand piano, deserves to be remembered as the worst piece of television ever made.

It got ever so slightly better, but damage limitation was the best this shambles could hope for.

A nice respectable highlights show with proper analysis, features on the big issues affecting Scottish football and on at a decent time. That isn’t too much to ask for in a replacement, is it? Hosts who don’t make you want to self-harm would also be an improvement.

IT’S time to pack away the strawberries and celibate 1960s warblers for another year as Wimbledon 2006 has been and gone already.

A nation’s sporting spirits were lifted after Andy Murray’s humping of Andy Roddick only to be crushed a few days later. Martina Navratilova said goodbye to the tournament she dominated for many years and there was the usual talk about players performing better on clay or grass (at least it’s legal to smoke clay).

Other than that, most laymen, such as I, can tell you nothing about the tournament because we know nothing about the game. Oh, we pretend, of course, because we want people to think we know everything about everything. Thus, to the perennial annoyance of genuine tennis fans, for a fortnight each year half the country goes around talking with great authority about a sport they’d switch off at any other time.

Except all they’re doing is quoting statistics they don’t fully appreciate the relevance of and paraphrasing the more easily-understandable snippets they hear on telly.

And it’s not just tennis — it’s every sport. I know diddly squat about rugby other than the fact it’s played by public schoolboys who couldn’t get a game at football, but despite this, I thought I was Bill McLaren during the last Six Nations. I became embroiled in heated debates about line-out strategies and dropped, “Hadden’s sorted out the backs” into conversations in a vain attempt to pass off this incisive observation as my own.

The information overload nature of televised sport and commentary tends to make us think we know more about a game than we actually do. Unless you’re watching Scotsport that is, when you’re left wondering whether the Apocalypse would really be such a bad thing.

Sometimes you need a little something to restore your faith in America. Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show is a reminder that not all Yanks are warmongering, flag-waving zealots crushing all that stands before them under the wheels of their off-roaders.

Instead, it cuts through the madness of US politics and exposes the hypocrisy and greed at its core, with no sacred cows safe from Stewart’s satirical slaughterhouse. Just like Fox News then. It’s also very funny.

What is utterly bizarre, however, is the level of anger directed at the host. He, after all, is not a potential future leader of the country trying desperately to be hip and turn the political process into an X-Factor-style popularity contest.

The furore, of course, centres upon JR asking David Cameron if he’d ever thought about Margaret Thatcher during an inappropriate moment (or something similar).

Fair enough, Question Time (BBC1, 10.35pm, Thursday) may play host to stuffy politicians and commentators but the wave of puritanical outrage from both panel and audience over the incident had to be seen to be believed. This journey back to Victorian times took place as Ross’s character was assassinated and calls were made for the BBC to take disciplinary action against him.

Why? This is the type of question asked every week by a man who thrives on innuendo and whose career has been built upon pushing the boundaries of good taste.

David Cameron should have known this before agreeing to appear on the programme and exposing himself to this line of interrogation.

If someone believes Ross’s humour is puerile and degrading to women then they should at least be consistent in their umbrage.

Had Jonathan Ross asked the same question to Bruce Willis about a female co-star would there have been the same hysterical response?

So, let’s get this right. A bunch of narcissistic pseudo-celebrities are flown over to Fiji so cameras can follow their every move to see who pulls who. Eh? That’s it? That’s this celebration of superficiality in its entirety?

What happens down the line? “Mummy, mummy, how did you and daddy meet?”. “Oh, well you see darling, daddy’s record company had dropped him, and mummy was too old to do Page Three, so we went on this reality show with Patrick Kielty and Fearne Cotton and, that’s it . . .”

Panorama (BBC1, 9pm, Sunday) highlighted the scandal when a senior bank executive explained how banks push debt for fantastic profits. As someone who briefly worked for a large, supposedly reputable, bank (and who was told to flirt with old women in order to increase credit card sales) I wasn’t surprised by what the whistleblower said.

If there were any doubts over how dangerous credit can be the programme also highlighted the problem of people committing suicide when their debts spiral out of control.

“Oh, but we’re just offering credit to people, it’s up to them whether they use it,” say the banks. I would imagine a heroin dealer might use a similar argument to defend his or her occupation.

The programming is of a high quality and the BBC’s schedules are more diverse than any of their commercial rivals. Plus there are no adverts to endure. Bliss.

The latest salary rises being handed out to director-general Mark Thompson and the rest of the bigwigs are indefensible however. Thousands of BBC employees face redundancy at a time when Thompson’s salary is rising by £160,000 to an astronomical £619,000.

Even if this didn’t completely fly in the face of what the new cost-effective BBC are supposedly trying to achieve, there are still a million ways this money could be better spent than lining the pockets of already-overpaid execs.

The man’s knowledge of Scottish history and nature was remarkable and his enthusiasm for the country and its people breathtaking.

In recent years many attempts to go to bed have been foiled by the realisation that Weir’s Way was on at 1.40am.

The Scotland of Weir’s Way is one which seems alien to us now. Although filmed from 1972 onwards it could well have been years earlier.

It marked a time when rural Scotland came face-to-face with modernity and, in many cases, the end of a lifestyle which had served their families for generations.

For that Tom Weir deserves to be remembered as a documenter of social history.