I realise that not everyone can be blessed with Rain Man style total-recall like myself. There are people out there who forget things really very easily indeed. Your girlfriend forgets where she put her keys, your Dad forgets his glasses are actually on his head, and Bill Clinton forgot that he got noshed off in the Oval Office.

Everyone forgets things now and again.

I can only guess that this is the reason why many of todays TV drama’s have the short ‘catch-up’ at the start of each episode reminding everyone what has happened so far in the story. Generally speaking, this is just the salient points, the key plot lines and major incident milestones. It covers all the things that anyone without a major brain injury would have remembered anyway.

I can almost forgive this waste of air-time, as I know a few stupid and forgetful people, and I realise that their enjoyment of the programme would be compromised without reminding them every week of why they are watching it. A lot can happen in a week, and in some cases a week can be a very long time. Say, if you were in solitary confinement, hanging from a cliff or on holiday with Jade goody.

However, what I am having a great deal of trouble coming to terms with is when these reminders appear not after a week, but after a two minute commercial break. Which is precisely what happened when I was watching Best Mans Speech on ITV2 the other night. It was about a professional comedian, Sean Hughes, helping two best men prepare for their speech.

I noticed that after each and every commercial break they had a ‘quick’ recap of what had happened so far.

“Here’s Bruce, we met him 25 minutes ago, he’s going to be his brothers Best Man, which is what this programme is about, in case you’d forgotten. You remember when he went to look at that horse six minutes ago? Well, here he is again, looking at that same horse. Again. It’s not that he went back, we’re just showing you the same visit again, cos it wwas good, like. Nice Horsey. Also, we made him try and sell bottled water on the street, so here’s a clip of him doing that again. I know you saw it when it happened 20 minutes ago, and again after the fist break 10 minutes ago, but we thought it was good so lets see it again. Don’t worry if you’re going to make tea, we’ll show him selling the water again in about 8 minutes.”

Do they honestly imagine that viewers are sat there thinking, “What is this? Was I watching this? What is it about? Who am I? Where am I?”

Is there anyone out there who is genuinely capable of forgetting every aspect of a television programme in the time it takes to have a sit down wee? If so, I am more than a little concerned for them.

If this trend is going to continue then you’ll really only need to tune in for the last quarter of an hour to enjoy the programme of your choice.

Without the recaps that programme could easily have been aired in 20 minutes. Sean Hughes, you owe me half an hour.

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