Digital network More4 is to mark Channel 4‘s 25th birthday in the autumn with a month of programming running up to the November 2 anniversary, reports Ze Guardian. More4′s Channel 4 25th birthday season (that’s a gob-full isn’t it?) will run throughout October and include some of the highlights… and more importantly, the lowlights… of the network’s patchy… and sometimes brilliant history.

Programmes set to feature in the More4 season will no doubt include 80s music show The Tube and the drama Walter, which was broadcast on Channel 4′s opening night on November 2, 1982. Directed by Stephen Frears, Walter told the story of a mentally retarded boy (are you allowed to say that these days?) who lost his parents and starred Sir Ian McKellen in one of his first big TV roles.

So what else is likely to feature? The 1985 film, My Beautfiul Launderette, the first big success for the broadcaster’s movie production arm FilmFour, should get a look in, also, Jonathan Ross’s chatshow The Last Resort.

But what of the lowlights? Surely we’ll be seeing the pervy wrongs of the Mini Pops, as well as various errors from The Word (see Lynne Perry, the wannabes et al) and the famous “Oliver Reed moment”, when the actor hijacked an episode of late-night chatshow After Dark when he was drunk and proceeded to insult feminist writer Kate Millet by trying to kiss her and calling her “big tits”. Hilariously, Channel 4 stopped the show and hastily replaced it with a grainy documentary about coal mining, but not before Reed was seen falling over a sofa on his way to the toilet. Fantastic stuff.

“The retrospective will go right back to 1982 and we will be taking a lot of stuff out of the cupboard,” said the More4 controller, Peter Dale. “The details of the programming lineup are being finalised because a number of rights issues have still yet to be cleared up. But what we want to do is give a sense of how good and how bad Channel 4 has been over the years, how in the best possible way it has pushed the boundaries but also fallen flat on its face. Because that is what Channel 4 is about.”

It is understood Channel 4 had initially planned to air a less deferential 25th anniversary tribute season, but there is said to have been a change of heart after a difficult few months which saw Ofcom laying the smackdown on their candy asses over the Celebrity Big Brother racism row and the phone vote scandal with Richard & Judy’s You Say We Pay competition.

“Initially Channel 4 didn’t want to have a schmaltzy celeberation – that was how it perceived ITV1′s 50th anniversary programming last year,” said a source familiar with the 25th birthday plans. “It also never celebrated its 20th birthday. But now Channel 4 wants to make this much more celebratory and, given its problems this year, it is not hard to realise why it needs to do this.”

What do you think should be included? I’d like to see the spooky Jake’s Progress recalled (which featured a very odd child alongside Robert Lindsay and Julie Walters) and for humour value, I’d love to see Snoop Dogg getting attacked by Rod Hull again! What are your thoughts readers? [Mof Gimmers]