I am old enough to remember some of the great Government/BBC bust ups which were reminiscent of heavyweight boxing matches with the corporation invariably taking a pounding.

Now a brilliant account of those tumultuous years, Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987 has been published by Jean Seaton, the BBC’s official historian.

For those who don’t recognise the title it has been taken from Private Eye’s hilarious spoof Dear Bill column, in which Margaret Thatcher’s husband Denis would frequently inveigh against BBC staff. Some of the biggest and most memorable battles were waged over the corporation’s reporting of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Falklands War.

But given the economic upheavals, political scandals, the miners’ strike and all manner of difficulties following the Royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di, the BBC for much of the period resembled a hen-pecked husband just waiting to be given a good kicking.

The Conservative government was good at applying pressure. It was intimidating and knew exactly where to place its hands around the corporation’s windpipe.

There was Mrs T’s famous attempt at denying the IRA the “oxygen of publicity” preventing supporters of the Provisional IRA in Sinn Féin – or indeed loyalists – from talking freely on the UK’s airwaves. This resulted in the absurd and somewhat surreal practice of actors having to read out Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness’s statements.

Then there was time when Conservative Party chairman Norman Tebbit condemned Kate Adie’s reporting of the US airstrikes on Libya on April 1986. She was accused of pro-Libyan bias. On that occasion the BBC stood firm but it was an uncomfortable, no-holds barred climate in which to operate. Pre-general elections, the BBC was routinely ‘softened-up’ by some of the Party’s more belligerent MPs.

It all seems a long time ago, now.

Life has moved on.

So, how was it for you then? Erotic World Book Day, stoopid!

Yes, me neither. But apparently Thursday was the day and if we can have a Banana Day, (April 15), then why not. And given the largely female frenzy over the Fifty Shades trilogy it’s likely writing groups up and down the country will be trying their hands at writing sex scenes.

After all the Women’s Institute has been at it with the writers’ group at the Wellington branch in Somerset garnering national headlines for their collection of steamy, short stories.

I’m not sure if the late Auberon Waugh’s award for bad sex writing is still with us but I suspect if it is it will be deluged with entries given the recent vogue for erotica.

Good novel writing is a difficult enough feat at the best of times and many talented writers have come a cropper trying their hand at creating urgent, angst-ridden bedroom scenes from AA Gill to Evelyn Waugh.

In Brideshead Revisited Charles Ryder and Julia’s sex scene is rendered thus: “So at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover... Now on the rough water, as I was made free of her narrow loins...”

The trouble with the British is that we very quickly begin to giggle at such things. Leave it to the French.