There used to be a programme on UK TV featuring two characters called the Chuckle Brothers. They looked like car thieves and acted like drunken pikeys trying to attract attention in the street while their friends picked the pockets of bystanders.

The Chuckle Brothers look like they come from Darlington or St Helen’s or somewhere. I haven’t got a clue where the fuck they were really from.

Further back, the Krankies, who came from Glasgow or somewhere, set the tone. Ian Krankie was a grinning permed fool who looked like a 70s changing-room loiterer and, in a twist guaranteed to give a generation of children nightmares, Jimmy Krankie was a schoolboy who played his wayward, cheeky son but who was actually his wife.

Confused? How the fuck do you think we felt? After all, there was a programme called Ask Aspel, starring Michael Aspel, in which kiddiewinkies could request clips form the weeks TV. Aspel himself said years later that entire schools of children thought his first name was Ask. What chance did we have with a horrific Scottish schoolboy-son-woman aberration?

Now, of course, the Krankies deserve to be called cults. Yes, cults, the pair of them.