IN this age of digital TV and remote-controlled CD systems, there are still a few greybeards around who can remember when home entertainment involved 'watering' the wireless set!

Daniel Cunningham (79) of Kensington Avenue, Sherdley Park, first plugged into the airwaves as a boy in 1928. Improved reception, he explains, could be obtained on rudimentary radio sets by watering a copper earth-wire rod sunk in the garden.

"I first heard a broadcast through headphones extended from Mr Dickens's wireless set, nextdoor-but-one to us in Tennyson Street, Sutton Manor."

When his family moved two years later to Forest Road, a young Prescot Cables employee made the Cunningham family an accumulator-powered set of their own. Complete with two dials and a switch, it was placed on a high shelf. "To change stations my father - who was in sole charge! - lifted the lid and exchanged plug-in coils."

The aerial wire extended from a tall pole at the bottom of the garden resulting in a sound of sorts, coming from a horn speaker plonked on the side-board or a dresser top. And despite all the crackle, a young Daniel Cunningham was delighted to hear the wonder of sound coming from as far as Toulouse, and Luxembourg.

AND he really thought he'd stepped into the realms of high technology when the family bought an electric driven Vidor set in 1934.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.