Ooh! A lamb being born! Now where's the mint sauce?
The Beeb's Lambing Live did meat eaters a big favour, suggests Dougal Paver.
If you feed your family off the fat of the land, as us Pavers are wont to do, the BBC's attempts at showing kinship with country folk always grate.
'Laughably bad', might be a fairer description. After all, that most urban of our institutions, stuffed to the gunnels with townies, has an institutional block on the countryside. Just read the rants in the letters page of Shooting Times each week and you'll see what I mean.
So there it was, last night, hailing its blockbuster 'Lambing Live' on BBC 2 whilst millions of country folk decided to wash their hair. Cut to arc lights illuminating fields and barns in remote Snowdonia and Flossy the Sheep was pushing for all her might to bring Larry in to the world.
For anyone with a parental instinct, it was lovely stuff. For those who enjoy a good rack of lamb it was reassuring to see next month's Sunday lunch arrive on time.
Whether it scored many points with rural viewers remains to be seen but there was other value to be had from the programme - namely, the fact that it reminded people where their meat came from.
Guess what? It's not a factory.
Truth be told, that message has been driven home these last five years by field evangelists such as Hugh Fearnley-Wotsisname and the shooting community's hugely successful Game to Eat campaign. In line with rapidly rising sales of wild game has come an understanding that free range meat of this type has benefits far beyond its low cholesterol and happy lifestyle.
And so whilst the BBC may be late to the game, they've still done us meat-eaters a favour. Now where did I put the pepper?
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