Brands maligned # 1. The telly.

Telly gets short shrift in some quarters. ‘Chewing gum for the eyes.' 'The cathode ray road to hell.' And so on.

I read with increased annoyance this weekend the self-aggrandising wittering of one Guardian journalist who after x years of banishing TV from his house had relented and bought a flat screen. His kids were ecstatic. Of course they were.

In my view, denying kids access to telly is tantermount to child abuse. Those who do it are not doing it for their kids’ sake; they do it for their own sakes. They imagine that they produce rounder and enriched children because of it when the reverse is true.

What they really do is disenfranchise their kids from the world they inhabit. Their kids are unable to partake in conversations - partake in playground chitty-chat about Dr. Who, Sherlock et al. They exist in a state of 'otherness' because of their parents' vaingloriousness. Their childrens' interests may not lie wholly within telly, but their understanding of the world they inhabit will be delayed and curtailed because they are denied access to it.

Telly is a great educator - passive or active. Rather like a physics lesson you had in 1973. You didn't think you were listening but somehow, somewhere, at a later date what you heard saves the day in some way.

Newspapers are littered with such stories. People are alive because someone saw something on Casualty. Or they saved their own life because of something they saw on CSI. Only today I read about a father who saved his son (10) who was waist-high in mud and sinking fast. He did so because they are in the habit of watching Bear Grylis together and it was something that dad saw and remembered that saved his son’s life.

I also have reason to thank telly. Some six years ago I was working with a client in my native Yorkshire. I'm a long-distance runner and my then daily route took me 7 miles away from base-camp through neighboring villages to the foot of a 1.4 winding mile-long road which led to a famous folly called Hoober Stand. At the base of it stood two cottages, one of which had a couple of huge and ferocious Alsatian guards dogs.

One morning, having reached their gate, they barked, snarled, frothed and butted the gate as usual. Only this time the gate sprung open and they both raced out and clamped their jaws around me - one on my right arm, the other on my left thigh.

They were trying to pull me onto the ground. I froze. I didn't know what to do, but I knew instinctively that if I let them drag me down I was a goner. I really, really thought that that was it. I was brown bread. It took every ounce of strength I had to remain upright. They ripped the arse out of my running shorts and shredded my vest.

And then, from nowhere, I remembered something I'd seen on telly. Part of a tourist safari group had become separated from their main group and found themselves surrounded by Lions. Their guide had told them to make as much noise as possible to scare them off. They did and they survived.

So I screamed. They let go and retreated slightly. I stopped and they resumed their attack. So I stood statue-like, saving my breath for the scream of my life. I screammmmmed and walked very, very, slowly for around 200 yards with them following, snarling and snapping until they stopped at the end of what I assume they considered to be their domain. I ran the remaining 7 miles back home and called the police. It went to court and the owner got his.

So never brand telly as a waste of time. It’s why I’m still here.