SINCE it is the school holidays there is the usual tussle over what we are going to watch.

Obviously this is all in between Easter egg hunts and trips out.

I do try to keep viewing to a minimum - but in general it is trying to stop them watching other kids play with toys they could actually be playing with themselves.

Try as I might, I just cannot get my head around this modern phenomenon.

I can only shake my head as the water guns and outdoor equipment are left abandoned in favour of watching someone called Ryan run around on a You Tube clip, actually using his.

When the normal television is turned on the choice between Bing, the annoying bunny, and someone featuring precocious tweenagers, is a tough one.

The older child has graduated to more mature shows, so we can sit together and watch hopeless celebs attempt to make a flock of swans swimming on a lake of raspberry coulis, or the comedy where Jack Dee moves to the countryside.

Or Britain’s Got Talent - more on that later.

But the four-year-old still like CBeebies - a land of programmes carefully chosen to at least try and educate, inform and create rounded human beings from potentially square-eyed little darlings.

Among the more palatable are Pablo, I can sing this theme tune and many others, about a little autistic boy which rather cleverly explains what it must be like to live with it, and Peter Rabbit.

I also know most of the little songs in this.

There is the one where Peter is encourage to be brave and then the main song itself.

Song features heavily in a number of the shows.

Mac and Mollie, seemingly the modern successor to Balamory since both are set in Scotland and feature a community of people who all have various problems and mysteries to solve, has a lot of songs too.

I even found myself attempting the one where they realise they have a problem and they don’t know what to do when I was putting my son in the car the other day and we realised we had forgotten something vital.

But it struck me how, ten years ago I had the Balamory ditties spinning around my head and now a new generation of irritating shows were once again making their mark.

One day I will no longer be watching said programmes on a loop, and will obviously feel bereft about it.

For now though, I applaud myself at managing to sidestep in the Night Garden this time and the raft of shows which make no sense at all to me.

I must have watched hours of Iggle Piggle, Makka Pakka and Upsy Daisy skipping about, leaping on and off the Ninky Nonk and Pinky Ponk and for some reason every episode just seemed to be the same.

I have also, returning to my previous point, watched hours of dud auditions at the hands of Britain’s Got Talent.

Amongst the slew of terrible turns we also had the return of presenter Ant after almost a year away.

It was an understandably muted affair, mentioned only in poignant passing by a little girl who told him she had “missed him.”

Elsewhere there has been very little in these first couple of shows which seems original.

Yet the judges still told the ventriloquist chap they had never seen an act like it - if I were the comedian Nina Conti I would be having a quiet word.

She has been doing that exact act for years now.....