Although many social anthropologists maintain that the consumer durable which epitomised the 1970s was the K-Tel homehaircut kit - which turned your living room into a barber's shop (Sweeney Todd style) by ripping great clumps of hair directly out of your scalp - for me it has to be the Slimwheel. By dint of brilliant marketing, this preposterous keepfit device was sold to millions on the basis that it could "get rid of your beer gut", and, in a sense, it could, because users soon found that it totally dislocated their spine, resulting in no work, no money, no beer, and, therefore, no beer gut.

Its "simplicity" was much emphasised (although in reality it was the purchasers who were simple), and the rim left such deep ridges in the carpet that New Age travellers would frequently turn up at the door, and insist on taking pictures of the mysterious crop circles that had formed in your Axminster.

Such was the strain on the human body that many users had heart attacks and died, weren't discovered until rigor mortis had set in and had to be trundled down to the crematorium like wheelbarrows, which frankly didn't look too dressy on the obituary page.

While Slimwheeling parents were on their knees, discovering the joys of a freshly strangulated hernia, their children were watching educational programmes on daytime television, very similar to Look Around You (BBC2). I say "very similar to" because the late scheduling of last night's seemingly innocuous maths lesson forewarned us that there would be something decidedly odd about this short didactic film, which seemed to come from a parallel universe and to be intended for pupils of incomprehensive schools. The familiar ITV Television for Schools and Colleges disappearing clock (with guitar) was followed by a lecture that captured the very quiddity of educational television in the late 1970s and early 1980s, down to the opening graphics, generated in Basic by a state-of-the-art BBC Acorn computer. And considering that most daytime TV nowadays seems intended for audiences with a mental age of 10, why shouldn't some adult time-slots be filled with what is ostensibly schools programming?

"This programme, Maths, is discussed in chapter 3.1415926 of your text book which accompanies this series," said a Jeremy Nicholas-like period voice-over that oozed dispassionate authority. The man was clearly pi-eyed, because he proceeded to tell us that "Maths stands for Mathematical Anti-Telharsic Harfatum Septomin", and advised us to "think of it as the language of numbers, with one equalling A, two equalling the, three equalling hello, and so on," then ordered us to: "Write that down in your copy book now."

And so the wonderfully insane but plausible lecture continued, illustrated by convincingly recreated archive clips of surreal blandness, and accompanied by music generated by the sort of primitive synthesisers that ruined many an otherwise splendid album of the period (Band on the Run, for one). You know the sound: a saw-tooth buzz like a cat chewing a bee, and a "slew" effect that resembles the explosion of gastric juices from a patient on a mortuary slab on a hot summer's day, after the air conditioning has failed. That sort of sound.

To the casual eye, it all looked like a typically dull fourth-form algebra lesson, complete with inscrutable mathematical propositions. "Imhotep is taller than Jean but shorter than Lord Scotland," droned the lecturer, but the comedy arose not just from the perfectly-observed parody, but also from some exquisite flights of fancy.

One minute, eight housewives were buying eight shoes for eight spiders, the next Queens Elizabeth III, IV, and V were showing off their Gormenghastly outfits (including one royal dress that could change shape and colour at will, but also had an unfortunate propensity to burst into flames) and, best of all, two young graffitists were seen spray-painting a complex equation onto a brick wall. Well, it's better than taking E, I suppose. Although in their case, they'd probably have taken mc2, knowing that it's the same thing.

Despite the massive hype that greeted the start of The Office, 54 million people in Great Britain didn't watch the first episode, and more than 55 million didn't watch the second. Having received virtually no pre-publicity whatsoever, Look Around You probably started out last night with 56 million not watching, but I'd be prepared to bet that its audience will grow steadily, while The Office's ratings continue to fall.

Together with director Tim Kirkby, writers-producers Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz have created a truly original series, and as I watched the rest of the preview tape (don't miss the ghost being electrocuted and the adventures of a rectal thermometer in the weeks to come), I was reminded that I continued to tune into schools programming long after I'd left the place.

Well, back in those days, there were no such things as satellite porn channels or domestic VCRs. For a guy with no girlfriend, programmes like The Miracle of Birth were the only place I was ever going to see a vertical bacon sandwich (albeit accompanied by a hell of a lot of placenta). Sorry, but I was a teenage boy without a girlfriend, and pussy is pussy.