These days I sometimes find myself sitting alongside grandson Sam and watching the Teletubbies.

These, as those of you with young grandchildren of your own will know, are four well-rounded and reputedly male creatures by the name of Tinkywinky, Dipsy, La-La and Po who live in a sort of commune hidden beneath a grassy knoll.

Sam thinks they're all called Po. The other day, when his Grandma took him for a walk through the village, he spied a toy Tinkywinky in a charity shop window. Tinkywinky, for those not intimately acquainted with the Teletubbies, is the limp-wristed purple one who carries a red handbag and has a triangular aerial on their head.

Sam spied it in the window and cried "Is Po! Is Po!" When my wife took him into the shop to inquire about it, he rummaged in the window and seized it triumphantly. He is now the proud owner of a 50p purple Tinkywinky called Po, and won't go to sleep unless it's lying in his cot next to his pillow.

The Teletubbies are not the most sensible of creatures. In fact, in plain and politically incorrect terms, they're a bit simple. And they're boring as well.

Apart from the purple Po who's become his constant companion, even Sam has grown rather bored with them, which is quite discerning for someone who's not yet two years old.

Thankfully, he's rather keener on Thomas the Tank Engine (he knows at a glance which loco is Henry or Percy, and which truck is called Toby) and has recently graduated to Postman Pat. Both of these are much more entertaining for granddads.

But looking back to my own childhood, I can't really be too critical of the Teletubbies. Do you remember the sort of things we used to watch, once television had come in and we'd moved on from radio favourites like Toytown (with Larry the Lamb)?

There were Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, whose conversation made the Teletubbies sound like a panel of Mastermind contestants. There was Muffin the Mule, whose only talent was the ability to strut, stiff-legged, on the piano of a presenter called Annette Mills.

And there was Andy Pandy, a boy-child dressed in a clown's suit who shared a wicker picnic basket with a teddy called Teddy and a doll called Looby Loo and never uttered a word to either of them. Among all that lot, Sooty was an oasis of intellectual stimulation.

No, who are we to criticise the Teletubbies? The wheel has gone full circle. Our children had the best of it, with Magic Roundabout, The Wombles, Pippin and Tog, The Clangers, and all the rest of the hippy-inspired, environmentally-aware programmes that used to fill the children's TV hours back in the late 1960s and through the 1970s.

Now, I'm afraid that if the Teletubbies is any guide, the stuff for youngsters has gone back to being as soft in the head as it used to be when we were children. But it didn't do us any harm, did it? Oggaloggalop sloggalop? Weeeeed!

n If you are an over-50s person (and I must assume that most of the people who read this page are, or at least wish they were), how do you prefer to be referred to?

Most people over that age apparently prefer to be called a "wrinkly", with others preferring the terms "silver surfer", "golden ager", "senior citizen" and "crinkly".

The least-liked terms are "pensioner", "third ager", "OAP", "silver surfer" (yes, that one again) and "granny/grandad".

This, at least, is the gospel according to a poll conducted by Onseniors.co.uk, which describes itself as "the UK's leading website for the over 50s".

Yes, we're back to the Internet, the modern means of communication which we seem to be getting the hard sell about almost all the time. All you need is a grand or two to spend on the right computer equipment, the patience of Job to learn how to work it properly and cope with it when it behaves eccentrically, and months or possibly even years of your life with nothing better to do except try to find your way around the countless websites on offer.

There you will find such oddities as this poll and be left wondering how "silver surfer" can have come second in the "Favourite terminology" category and fourth in the "Most hated terminology" category.

To be fair, these are not the final results. On-line older people still have until Christmas Eve to sort out this apparent contradiction by logging on and making their views known.

On the other hand, they might prefer to spend the time getting a life instead.

Enjoy Mike Priestley's Yorkshire Walks

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