British television is supposed to be the best in the world, so how is it that the most-watched programme on BBC1 for several years was 'Noel's House Party'?

Millions each week tuned into a bearded 70s dinosaur in vomit-inducing knitwear humiliating B-list celebrities, assisted by a six-foot pink polka-dotted blimp whose entire vocabulary consisted of the word 'blobby'. This inanity was prime-time Saturday-night scheduling and pulled in bigger viewing figures than David Attenborough could ever have dreamed of. As a broadcasting nation we proudly export the likes of 'Life on Earth', 'Monty Python' and 'The Magic Roundabout' all round the world, but what are we left with on a quiet night in? Crinkly Bottom.

Meanwhile, over on ITV, we are proffered ten talentless nobodies impersonating washed-up singers who haven't had a hit in years on 'Stars in the Their Eyes'. A short while ago we were treated to a titanic battle of the champion amateur divas from the last ten years. Past winners who had since made passable attempts at a cabaret career belted out, amongst others, their versions of 'Goldfinger' a la Shirley Bassey and 'Unforgettable' in the guise of Nat King Cole. With your eyes closed and giving them the benefit of the doubt, for a discerning listener it was just about possible to believe that you were hearing the real thing.

However, letting Joe Public in on the act of deciding the winner is never to be recommended. The Shirley Bassey and Nat King Cole wannabes picked up a few thousand votes apiece and would have gone home with smiles on their faces but, come the close of the count, the winner as voted for by 481 000 of 'you, the audience' was a pale-faced, reedy-voiced geek in a badly-fitting wig who sounded completely unlike Chris de Burgh singing that slow-dance-at-the-end-of-the-school-disco classic, 'Lady in Red'. This schmaltzy 80s ballad is the 'Noel's House Party' of pop - bland, tacky, uninspired, poorly written and unintellectually demanding. It slips through your mind like grains of sand through fingers, intangible and indistinguishable from the rest of the desert of popular pap.

Yet 'Noel's House Party', 'Stars in Their Eyes' and their chart-topping ilk make for compulsive viewing. They are so poorly conceived as forms of entertainment that a usually more scrupulous viewer cannot help but be sucked into the possibilities of Noel's gunge tank and the blatant incapability of Kevin from Scunthorpe to ape Neil Diamond. It is hard not to give in to cheap voyeurism and return to 'Blind Date' each week to find out whether Sharon the hairdresser from Basildon and Julian the sociology student from Durham will snog each other during their all-expenses-paid weekend on the Isle of Wight. It is then a simple channel-hop back to the BBC to watch overweight second-bests from the world of snooker performing unimpressive trick shots on 'Big Break'.

Those who watch these programmes with a sense of irony form only a tiny proportion of those Saturday tea-time viewers. In droves, the coach potato masses plonk themselves down in front of this drivel and agree that no-one else makes programmes as well as we do. But that's where they've got it wrong. The stuff that pulls in the ratings is not the intelligent political satires of BBC2 or the lucid and insightful documentaries from Channel 4. Comedy programmes with genuine wit struggle to capture the attention of a million viewers. What makes the nation sit up and beg for more is the same kind of brain candy that you can happily watch in any other country on the globe without having to speak the language. It is humour based on slapstick, mothers-in-law and bodily functions. It is cheap titillation based on semi-naked bodies, under-acheivement and sexual innuendo.

The nation that gave the world 'Colditz', 'Prime Suspect' and 'The Clangers' takes its cues from has-beens like Noel Edmonds and Cilla Black and relics of the Benny Hill era like Jim Davidson and Matthew Kelly - and it never stops to ask itself why.

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