It's a tragic reflection on the decline of civilisation as we know it that the Oxo Family has been declared redundant.

Apparently it no longer represents British life because families no longer eat together. They don't sit round a table. They graze while watching the television or surfing the Internet. And they buy pre-cooked meals instead of creating their own from raw ingredients.

According to one quote this week from Lynda Bellingham, the actress who has played the Oxo mum since 1983: "I don't actually think it is realistic, people cooking gravy".

That's bound to raise an eyebrow at Priestley Towers. There dwells the Queen of the Gravy Makers who can concoct a rich, meal-enhancing sauce out of nothing more than a vegetable stock cube, tomato puree, red wine, cornflour and the teeniest dash of Marmite (although sometimes chopped onions and mushrooms go in there too, if we're going for the de luxe version).

However, such skills belong to the past, according to Miss Bellingham. And according to the people behind this long-running and entertaining series of commercials, so do families sitting around the table to share a meal.

That, I reckon, is pretty sad. In fact, it's potentially disastrous from a social point of view. Families have few enough points of contact. They lead their own lives for much of the time. Parents work, children go to school. In the home they largely do their own things, often in separate rooms.

Mealtimes offer a rare opportunity for members of families to sit together and communicate with each other. Advantage isn't always taken of it. I can remember some grim mealtimes during our children's surly teenage years when my wife and I desperately tried to keep a conversation going between ourselves, but at least the opportunity was there for them to say something if they'd wanted to.

But taking the years overall, we had some pleasant, useful, productive family mealtimes when we talked about all manner of things and learned something about each other.

And we still do. On those too-rare occasions now when the whole family is back home together, swelled by the addition of a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law, we sit round the table and eat and drink and talk. And now young grandson Sam sits there with us, nibbling at his food while he listens to the hubbub around him and joins in from time to time.

Hopefully, he's learning something - not just from our conversation but also about table manners. Because those must be sadly lacking among people brought up in these grazing days.

How will these young citizens of tomorrow cope when as adults they find themselves invited out to a posh restaurant? Will they pick up their plate and their chair and set off in search of a television to sit in front of while they eat their meal off their knee?

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.