In the past there have always been dream jobs that people have hankered after. In the Fifties, everyone wanted to be a secretary; in the Sixties, a model like Twiggy; in the Seventies, an air hostess or a Charlie's Angel; in the Eighties, a tycoon; and now as the Nineties come to an end I realise that we have all evolved into caring, highly intellectual folk who all want to be, er, children's television presenters.

They say: 'never work with children and animals' but you are allowed to do both if it involves a contract with the BBC and hefty wads of cash.

Last Saturday, hopefuls on the programme Whatever You Want slogged it out for a job on children's telly. According to former Big Breakfast presenter, Gaby Roslin, there were literally thousands of entries and they were whittled down to three. Each of them looked desperate. And why not?

Being a children's television presenter has changed dramatically. Gone are the days when they used to wear high neck frilly blouses (well, unless you're Peter Duncan, of course) and say things like: "Oh, we do like that, don't we children?" in a highly patronising manner.

Nowadays, young female presenters bounce around in boob tubes and pedal pushers and platform sandals, and the glitter is more likely to be decorating their eyelids than any Christmas card. You have to send your dad out of the room, not because Katy Hill from Blue Peter is making a Father's Day card, but because she's bent over and exposing more cleavage than Melinda Messenger on late night television.

Kids' telly presenters have grown up. While former presenters like Phillip Schofield and Andi Peters are winning Baftas and producing films, the new funky breed are becoming celebrities in their own right and their antics are usually splashed over the tabloids (eg Richard Bacon).

Katy's recent wedding made the cover of OK! Magazine, Zoe Ball is about as famous as anyone she interviews on Live & Kicking, the latest addition to Blue Peter is a 6ft tall hunk who looks like he should be on a catwalk and Konnie is, er, just Konnie. Even the minor presenters who link the kiddies' progs in the afternoon are dressed up to the eyeballs and looked poised to take over the BBC.

But children's telly land is not just the domain of the vacuous with silly, inane grins and a desire not to grow up. Konnie is, allegedly, a Cambridge graduate (I don't know what she studied but she is now very good at being thrown into baths of gunge) and Dr Stephen Bull from Newsround is er, a doctor. (I suppose, anyone with half-decent looks and a medical degree might want to spare themselves doing a 300 hour weekly shift as a junior doctor and appear on television instead with masses of teen adulation, sacks of fan mail and a lot of dosh).

Being a kid's presenter is no longer the poor relation of a career in television. It is respectable (well, kind of), well paid and the best thing is, though you have to work with children and animals, most of the time they are sitting far away at home. Come to think of it, I too, have a very good line in vacuous grins and I know all the lingo: "Wow, wasn't that fantastic, brilliant, excellent, oh, great etc."

Hmm, well, it would certainly be nice to have children screaming with me instead of at me...

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