ONE of the 'benefits' of semi-retirement is that I can watch daytime TV. However, I try to give it a swerve because some of the stuff served up as entertainment is truly appalling.

We are offered B list 'celebs', unfunny comics, and gushing hosts using carefully-scripted 'ad libs' which bring gales of laughter from compliant and easy-to-please punters, wheeled in from retirement homes for the broadcast.

I was about to press the abort button before one such show when I heard the voice-over say that among the 'stars' appearing on that day's programme were The Appleton Sisters, singing 'live'.

I resisted the temptation to scream at the telly 'They'd have a tough job singing dead' as I didn't want to disturb the bull terrier, who greets such afternoon 'extravaganzas' by breaking wind then falling into a deeply-envied, comatose slumber.

Musical giants like Sinatra and Presley still manage to sing 'live', thanks to the techno wonders of video tapes, though they have long since departed for that big concert hall in the sky.

However, it's worth emphasising that they, and others of their talent and stature, did sing when they were performing. They never mimed, which is what the vast majority of today's musical pygmies are called upon to do by nervous managements, anxious not to expose them to their adoring public without the benefit of studio recording techniques, which can make someone as tuneless as me sound like Mario Lanza; Cilla Black even, God forbid.

These days, young men and women who enjoy pop stardom, no matter how fleeting, invariably 'lip sync' to tapes at 'live' performances. So 'live' doesn't mean 'live', does it?

I don't know how many, or exactly who, but I'm willing to bet that their numbers are in a majority as concerts which pull in thousands of young fans are invariably Olympic-standard presentations of high energy dancing, repetitive thumps, occasional half-recognised lyrics, dry ice, thunder flashes and scantily-clad boy and girl dancers jerking their limbs around like puppets on 'speed'. Not a musician in sight but, hey, what's music got to do with pop?

A couple of my friends chose, somewhat surprisingly I thought, to pay around £60 to see an American pop diva at the MEN arena. It was their 15th wedding anniversary and the wife treated her hubby as a reciprocal gesture for the expensive frock he had bought her.

Imagine their disgust and disappointment when they discovered the star was miming to tape. True she went through an astonishing number of costume changes, each outfit approximately the size of a gent's handkerchief, and the dance routines were only a shade below pornographic, sending the hubby into a glassy-eyed trance, eventually broken by an admonishing elbow in the nether regions. It couldn't have happened at a Sinatra concert.

Incidentally, the Appletons, former members of the girl group All Saints, should have mimed. Their 'live' offering was distinctly average.