Why Are People More Interested in Norman Mailer's Penis or Martin Amis's Teeth Than in Their Books?

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Clive James wrote that he gave up writing his Observer TV column when he started seeing the same ideas coming around and being acclaimed as original. Now it's not just a matter of ideas. Is it me, or are there more anniversaries than there used to be?

At the moment there are celebrations accompanying the 30th anniversary of the first: episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. There is a documentary, a book, repeats. A nation rejoices. But didn't we go through all this for the 25th anniversary? I remember a documentary presented by the comedy producer John Lloyd that featured all the same stories that are being told this time around.

We are paying a terrible price for living in an age when the people running BBC television are of the generation who spent much of the early seventies in …