Rediffusion is now popularly remembered for its strange mix of early evening popularism and later evening heavyweight documentaries. However, programmes like this, Michael Miles’s famous ‘Take Your Pick’, along with Hughie Green’s "Double Your Money" took up far less time in the schedules than it is now thought.

What the programmes did take up, however, was large numbers of viewers, and specifically the then-holy grail of advertisers, the family watching television together (it is now young men aged 18-34 they are interested in, mainly because that demographic is most willing to change brands of most products with little effort being required).

Family viewing, thanks to multiple-set households, has now declined. In the 1980s, children gained control of the channel-changer and decided what would be watched by all. By the 1990s, most had their own sets, so retreated to their bedrooms when ‘adult’ programmes came on. But in the 1950s and 1960s, the television was always firmly controlled by the father of the house. He chose what the family watched, and when – televisions were simply turned off in most households when no programmes that interested the father were on.

Therefore a programme that gained the attention of the whole family – however it did it – was good for advertiser and broadcaster alike. ‘Take Your Pick’ is now remembered not for being on air all the time, but for being on when the whole family was watching.