FORMER BBC weatherman Bill Giles has been raining on the parade of today’s weather presenters by telling them to stop nannying us viewers.

Mr Giles, who led the BBC’s weather team until 2000, is critical of the current crop of presenters who spend more time doling out advice about umbrellas and sun cream than they spend actually forecasting the weather.

He is right, of course. Television weather forecasting has become the latest exercise in treating the public like idiots. If sun is forecast do we really need to be told to wear sun cream and drink plenty of water by the likes of Tomasz Schafernaker? Or do we need Helen Willetts advising us to wrap up warm when snow is forecast? We don’t.

Creeping infantilisation is everywhere these days - and now it’s even pervaded the weather. What with storms having to be given cosy names like Angus and Doris (and how long will it be before someone decides storm names are too “white”/Christian etc and mounts a Twitter protest, I wonder), and the public being told out to watch out for slippy pavements, it really is all getting very silly. Bring back Michael Fish, I say. He told it like it was...