I’m really starting to enjoy this Youtube thing the kids are all talking about. Particularly given that tv to my taste is ever so slightly left of centre and sometimes hard to come by. Not any more it seems. So I thought I’d marshal some of it into an occasional substrand that’ll run here called Channel R.

It started off ages ago (scroll back I’m too lazy tonight) with The Adventure Game, Lily Allen’s Third Nipple, bits of Studio 60 etc.

Tonight’s delicacy? One of my idols – playwright, actor, novelist, singer, diarist, director, producer, screenwriter and, later in life, Vegas star, Noel Coward…

This was his first US TV triumph at the grand old age of 56:

Then there was his last hurrah in The Italian Job as Mr Bridger…

And then there’s this. Brief Encounter, written by him and directed by David Lean is Casablanca multiplied by 100. I cry every time I watch it…