WHEN I was young, subjects picked apart and discussed at length on television tended to be hard-hitting.

Things like global poverty, nuclear disarmament or environmental catastrophes were analysed on programmes such as Panorama or Horizon.

Now, just about every topic under the sun is analysed. Who snogged who and why in the Big Brother house, who ruined someone else's souffle in The Great British Bake Off, or why Katie Price was voted out of the jungle.

What has the world come to when valuable TV airtime is devoted to people discussing such things in detail?

This trend to have extra programmes after the main one has aired started, I believe, with 'The Apprentice, You're Fired', in which contestants who have been given the boot are interviewed afterwards.

I admit, it's interesting and amusing to focus on an individual and look at why they had to go.

But now dozens of programmes have spin-offs, with most adding nothing to the real thing.

Springwatch Unsprung and Bake Off An Extra Slice seem to me to be striving to create something from nothing.

I love Springwatch, but Unsprung is so dull I would rather watch the static webcam for an hour and enjoy a half-second glimpse of a shrew.

A bunch of sycophantic people gathered around the presenters who basically say the same things they said in the earlier programme. What is the point?

Just because viewers enjoy a show it doesn't mean we want it to go on for three hours.

'Now turn over for...' the continuity announcer will chirp after the programme has aired. NO, I DON'T WANT TO, I have watched that programme and I now I want to watch SOMETHING ELSE.

With Saturday and Sundays nights dominated by The X-Factor, surely the Xtra Factor is overkill. I admit, I haven't seen Big Brother's Big Mouth, and don't intend to – the real thing is bad enough.

Even shows like Take Me Out – which I like – have an add-on show set in a studio set 'club', where people are cajoled into confessing who they really fancy. Do we need it? Absolutely not. It ruins the fun of the original.

Its all too much. Next we'll have 3D Downton in which Abbey Clancy goes below stairs to chat to some of the characters and see what shenanigans go on when the cameras aren't running.

Maybe I'm just irritated that none of the programmes I like have extensions.