MY children couldn’t contain themselves. They jumped for joy and squealed with delight.

Well, they have waited quite a few years for a television.

Not that we’ve gone without – that would be unthinkable – but for as long as they can remember we have used my grandma’s telly which dates back to a time when Muffin the Mule was the high spot of children’s viewing.

It hasn’t got a socket for a SCART lead, so we can’t plug in a DVD player, it has no remote so we have to get up all the time (I know, that’s healthy, but it becomes irksome when people change their minds after two minutes), and the front is missing so all the buttons are exposed.

It also appears sensitive to different weather conditions.

If there’s an anticyclone, we can’t watch Channel 4, if it's pouring down half BBC1 isn’t great.

In short, it does not make for fantastic viewing of an evening. Plus, while my daughters are not at all materialistic – living in our house they really can’t afford to be – they twitch a bit when friends come round and laugh at the state of our telly.

So, when my husband heard he was to receive a long-service award at work, he decided to spend the money not on the traditional gold watch, but a new television.

It was delivered last week and was waiting for the children when they came home from school. I could hear their reaction from outside and it reminded me of the day my friend’s family became one of the first in our North Yorkshire village to get a colour TV.

It would have been about 1971, and it was the talk of the school bus. When we drove past her house, we all looked out of the window hoping to catch a glimpse of this much-coveted set.

I also remember when I first saw it in the flesh – or I should say, its enormous plastic surround – and thought everyone looked very red. Like many people in those days – and even now – they turned the colour to maximum even though the picture looked anything but lifelike.

I won’t be doing that with our new set, although I may turn it slightly sideways when people come visiting just to show how amazingly slim it is. I may also let slip that, yes, it is digital, and yes, it has HD so we will be able to see whether Keira Knightley has any wrinkles.

And I might be tempted to pop into the conversation that it also doesn’t need one of those extra boxes to show the millions of channels that we now have to choose from.

For me that’s one of the down sides, along with the fact that I am emotionally attached to my grandma’s TV. I don’t want millions of channels. I’m glad my children have grown up with only five, just two more than the olde-worlde channels I grew up with.

Anyway enough of that. Back to our brand spanking new TV.

My husband set it up on Saturday, ready for the X Factor.

And…it didn’t work.

Well it did, but only on the shopping channel. It appears we need a new aerial.

I knew it was too good to be true.