I like Phil Redmond. He’s a good Northern lad who likes his talk straight. Okay, he came up with Hollyoaks, but seeing as I’m a closet fan (not anymore you’re not – Ed.) I shouldn’t really grumble. Anyway, Redmond is peeved at the BBC thanks to the changes being made to iconic kids’ TV show Grange Hill, saying that it should be scrapped.

The schoolyard drama, all set to celebrate its 30th anniversary next month, is being rejigged to fit in with CBBC’s new (imagined) target audience. Instead of featuring gritty storylines (come on, they’ve looked at suicide, racism, drug abuse, teen pregnancy) the show will be relocating to a place called “The Grange”. What’s this? Well, it’s a multimedia learning centre. For pity’s sake…

In an interview with The Observer, Redmond said that he had originally planned to bring the show back to its 1980s heyday for the 30th anniversary by returning to more hard-hitting storylines. “We were all prepared to bring it right back to its original hard-hitting social edge for its 30th anniversary because we knew it should have got a lot of publicity and a lot of interest. It was at the very first storyline conference that we were told there’d been an editorial shift, so that went down like a lead balloon.”

Redmond also criticised BBC director general Mark Thompson’s plan for the corporation to make fewer but better programmes. “I think it’s all part of the ‘fewer, bigger, better’ nonsense,” he said. “How we’ve managed to let them get away with that so far I don’t know but I’m sure it’ll come back at them. To say the BBC’s role is to make fewer programmes is bizarre. I don’t like keeping things going when the point has been lost. I do now think the point of Grange Hill has been lost, and 30 years is a nice time for it to hang up its mortar board.”

The new series will air on CBBC in the Spring… if you’re at all interested after reading all that.