Ever wondered what was on TV on the day you were born?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/17/tv-day-you-were-born-bbc-genome-project

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Dear old Auntie Beeb. The corporation’s very nickname harks back to an innocent, bloomer-clad past. This week it launched an initiative that also appeals to our fuzzy sense of nostalgia. The BBC always gets flak for airing repeats but this is one throwback that surely won’t result in moany why-oh- why missives to Points of View.

The Genome Project is an online catalogue of its TV and radio broadcasts, based on scans of Radio Times listings going back to 1923 – totalling 4m-plus programmes from 4,469 issues. Visitors can search for specific shows or browse by year. It’s intended to help BBC archivists identify recordings missing from its vaults and try to track down copies of them. Yet it’s already proving hugely popular purely as a nostalgic tool. We’re logging on in droves to find what was transmitting on the day we were born (Hector’s House and World Cup Grandstand in my case), on our birthdays or wedding day, and then self-indulgently informing everyone on social media.

Since the beta version went live, I’ve hardly got any work done. I’ve been “busy” cooing at the fact that daytime TV didn’t exist until 1986 and we had to make do with the testcard or rotating pages from Ceefax instead. Marvelling at how many scheduling hours were eaten up with worthy schools programmes and beige Open University documentaries. I’ve been getting outraged that The Goodies was never repeated, chuckling at John Noakes’s knitwear and boggling at the sheer ubiquity of Noel Edmonds, Kenny Everett, Bob Monkhouse and Paul Daniels during 80s primetime.

It’s like having a televisual Tardis. The listings let you disappear down a rabbit hole to youthful evenings on Ercol three-piece suites. On the day I turned 16, The Kids of Degrassi Street came to an end and Janet Ellis announced the results of Blue Peter’s A-ha competition. The synopses of programmes are a joy, too: inscrutable and drolly dry, like little period pieces in themselves: “A stranger arrives at Southfork to claim his inheritance.” Some are just a single line of dialogue: “This is Lofty, he’s going to be your new daddy.”

It’s a treat to have one’s memories confirmed in authoritative Beeb black and white. Yes, M*A*S*H really did air on Sundays. Parky was on directly after Match of the Day. When Swap Shop finished, Michael Fish popped up to get the weather wrong.

We’ve all measured out our lives in Radio Times covers, especially the Christmas double editions – from The Two Ronnies to Del Boy Trotter via Wallace, Gromit, Frank Spencer, Pauline Fowler and Raymond Briggs’s Snowman. After all, Christmas only really starts when you go through the listings with a Stabilo Boss highlighter in a futile bid to head off squabbles over the remote control.

This is why television is so evocative – because it’s such an accessible-to-all domestic medium. Music has the power to transport us but it tends to whisk us back to social occasions and old flames: early gigs, disco dance floors, teenage bedrooms or rites-of-passage snogs. TV is cosier and more communal. It’s about home, family and – call me a soppy old fool – love.

Reminisce about the box and you’ll inevitably get misty-eyed about your old sitting room, being allowed to stay up late, Dad harrumphing behind the newspaper, Mum bringing in snacks, Nanna saying you’ll get square eyes, siblings being annoying, the dog twitching as it dreamed of chasing rabbits. Then tumbling into school the next day to endlessly quote Blackadder, The Young Ones or A Bit Of Fry & Laurie at your mates. Reading about your favourite shows in Look-In or Just 17, getting the annual for Christmas and devouring the tie-in novelisations (the Hardy Boys Mysteries and Doctor Who ones for me).

Few things make us more nostalgic than TV, especially the stuff we watched as children. If you’re ever stuck for pub conversation fodder, just get people on to kids’ telly and watch them go. It’s a failsafe student bantz standby. Remember the Clangers and Hartley Hare? How did that opening speech on He-Man or Thundercats go? Whatever happened to Pat Sharp, Grotbags, Bungle and Gripper Stebson? Who was Dangermouse’s arch enemy? (Baron Silas Greenback.) Where did Mr Benn live? (52 Festive Road.) Was Tony Hart’s caretaker called Mr Griffiths or Mr Bennett? (Bennett – Griffiths was Grange Hill’s.)

I could go on all day. I probably will. Similarly, countless hours are being wistfully lost on the BBC Genome website. See you there, on the squishy golden sofa of memories. Your turn with the remote.