A wander down to the National Film Theatre, for the annual showing of archive cricket footage. Grainy images of Victorian batsmen such as W G Grace and Prince Ranjitsinhji practising in the nets in the late 1800s was interspersed with toe-curling commercials for Player's Cigarettes, featuring stilted conversation between post-war England players and that epitome of sophistication, Raymond Glendenning:

The sequences, supposedly advising youngsters of the 40s and 50s on correct spin bowling and wicket-keeping technique, all ended with Raymond saying to the England star in question: “I expect that after all that, you'll be wanting one of these?” while offering them a carton of Player's fags. The overall effect made Harry Enfield's “Mr Cholmondley-Warner” sketches look like episodes of Newsnight. The same footage could possibly be used today to amuse young people into giving up smoking, if it were just overdubbed by Mr Enfield himself, saying “I expect that after all that, you'll be wanting to shorten your life expectancy and suffer from a debilitating respiratory disease?”

The evening as a whole left me feeling a deep nostalgia for periods of history that I never knew; footage of Horsham cricket ground in 1913, with crowds of politely promenading people in their Sunday best was particularly affecting. You can see why people in their 80s and 90s long for a return to the days where a policeman could clip a youngster round the ear for careless bicycle riding, without fear of having his head blown away with an unlicensed firearm. But I was also very grateful that I didn't have to put up with more than a couple of minutes of a plummy voiced actor making abysmal attempts at impressions of Northern comedians while interviewing Middlesex & England batsman Denis Compton. If I was a small boy back then, I expect I'd have had to put up with that kind of thing on a daily basis. Imagine! Much better today, eh, with kids entertained in a far more natural fashion on Saturday morning shows such as “Jumping Up And Down While Screaming Your F*cking Lungs Out” (© TVGoHome) …

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Oh look. Those fine, upstanding lenders of enormous amounts of hard cash, Egg, have just emailed me to advise of “a number of improvements to your policy that we must tell you about.” It goes on to tell me that “the suicide exclusion is being removed.” I'm not sure where this leaves me. Will I be better off if I take an overdose, right now? Or worse off? Only one way to find out, eh, readers! What-ho! Toodle-pip!