Owing to a technical difficulty beyond my understanding, I have been unable for some years to receive the BBC’s TV output in my home, which suggests I could jack the telly and save on the licence.

On the other hand, I like to do my bit for the corporation in helping to finance parts of its broadcasting that I cherish. These mean programmes on Radios 2, 3 and 4, plus Radio 4 Extra to which I am now often tuned.

Last Saturday was a blissful day of listening for me, with a vintage edition of Pick of the Pops on Radio 2 and a rarely-heard work – indeed one totally new to me – in Opera on Three.

The opera was Ernest Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus, written at the close of the 19th century and first heard in Brussels in 1903.

The modern-dress production, by English director Graham Vick, was recorded at the Paris Opera. The stellar cast included Sophie Koch and Roberto Alagna as the lovers Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot and Thomas Hampson as the cuckolded King Arthur.

The broadcast supplied a wonderful three-and-a-half hours of entertainment, with the influence of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde evident both in the plot and the orchestration.

As the Oxford Dictionary of Opera observes: “The work makes a discrete and individual use of motive, and is eloquently scored, but the influence of Wagner is intelligently and discreetly applied.”

Moving to Radio 2, I crave my readers’ indulgence in tolerating yet another reference to Pick of the Pops. But Saturday’s was indeed a very special edition.

For one thing, Tony Blackburn was giving us the chart of exactly 50 years ago, with such timeless classics as Len Barry’s 1-2-3, the Toys’ Lovers’ Concerto and the Rolling Stones’ Get Off My Cloud.

For another (and personal to me) this was the chart containing the first record I bought, the Yardbirds’ Still I’m Sad.

Tony played the song without pointing out that the record was a double A-side release. The other song, Evil Hearted You, was the one I preferred.

Brian Matthew played it for me seven or eight years ago on Radio 2’s Saturday morning show, Sounds of the Sixties, with my tale of how I acquired my Dansette record player at the same time.

Alas, I overslept and missed the broadcast, heard by my friends all over the world. I still have my bottle green shirt, bearing the programme’s logo, as a memento of the occasion.

Mention of Sounds of the Sixties prompts me to point out that Saturday’s show began with Ike and Tina Turner’s River Deep, Mountain High.

Brian told us quite a lot about the record but not the obvious fact about it that it was the work – indeed the favourite work – of producer Phil Spector. In a way unique to him, Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ recordings are to a greater extent ‘his’ than the work of those performing on them.

This makes it odd, to say the least, that his output continues to be widely aired on the BBC, despite the fact that he is serving a 19-year jail sentence for the murder of Lana Clarkson.

As this column has noted before, records by the likes of Gary Glitter, Jonathan King and Rolf Harris – all of whom have convictions for sex offences – are now purged from the airwaves.

Yet Spector’s records continue to be heard. His Christmas album will no doubt be on many a BBC turntable in the weeks ahead.

In the eyes of corporation panjandrums sexual molestation is clearly a more serious matter than murder.

There were no obvious discs for Tony to drop last week, though we did not get to hear It’s Good News Week, a Jonathan King production for Hedgehoppers Anonymous.

Their follow-up single, Don’t Push Me, which I bought and thought a better record, was not a hit.

Both were in the fashionable ‘protest song’ mode. So was Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction, which was also in the chart under review.

Tony didn’t play this either, thereby missing the chance to pay tribute to its writer, PF Sloane, who died on November 15 aged 70.