Readers a decade or so younger than me may not recognise this beloved trio, but trust me: my generation spent much of the 1970s regarding content like this as sufficient justification for the TV License Fee all by itself, if ever we gave that topic much thought. [note]Not that we were responsible for paying the licence fee - that was our parents' job - but even though science fiction assured us that we were destined for a multi-channel TV future it would be years before we'd need double digits to count the TV stations available to us. We mostly got on with enjoying the three TV channels - now in colour, even! - that we had.[/note] The presence of the BBC was immensely reassuring, no matter that some of our friends, for some strange reason, owed their allegiance to Magpie.