In the National Media Museum’s Experience TV gallery, a loop of iconic television moments includes England’s 1966 World Cup win, man leaping onto the moon, Nelson Mandela walking free from prison, and the collapse of the Twin Towers.

My defining TV moments are less earth-shattering. Thanks to an early fascination with daytime TV, I can still sing the entire theme tune to Australian soap Sons And Daughters more than 20 years after it aired.

I got sucked into daytime telly again recently while laid up at home with a chest infection. Dissolving into coughing fits that would wake the dead, glugging medicine with the decorum of a meths-swigging vagrant, I stared listlessly at the TV screen flickering with primary-coloured images.

Whatever passes for Richard and Judy these days was a hotch-potch of cliches and cheesy links, with Stepford-like people perched on sofas blurring items on kidney dialyses, risotto, Jennifer Anniston’s love-life and this season’s denim.

There were frantic antiques challenges and DIY programmes transforming back bedrooms for a tenner, and depressing ‘audience discussion’ shows with paternity tests ‘coming up after the break’.

Scattered in between were endless adverts for no-win-no-fee law firms, complete with badly-acted reconstructions of industrial accidents, and appeals for unwanted gold.

It left me with a nostalgic yearning for the daytime schedule of yesteryear. When I was growing up, on the rare occasions I was allowed to miss school because of sickness, morning telly was all ‘schools programmes’, the most memorable being How We Used To Live – a kind of grittier Lark Rise To Candleford.

Lunchtimes were dominated by children’s shows like Rainbow and Pipkins, then came Crown Court and an occasional Armchair Thriller. I still shiver at the memory of blood dripping onto that armchair during the opening credits. Being on in the afternoon, in that quiet limbo time when the rest of the world is at work or school, made it even creepier.

When I was a teenager, Australian soaps started appeared on daytime telly. They were corny, wooden and oddly dated-looking – I loved them. If I timed it right, I could get home from school in time for Sons And Daughters, A Country Practice and The Young Doctors. Later, as a student, I timed my revision breaks with lunchtime Neighbours.

It’s just not the same now. Daytime TV is far too slick and bland. Pipkins has been replaced by the cackling Loose Women. Paternity tests have taken over the schools programmes. There’s unwanted gold where Crown Court used to be.

Daytime telly as I remember it has turned into an episode of How We Used To Live…