Facts and stick figures

MENTION the artist LS Lowry to anyone raised in the Seventies and the chances are they'll burst into song.

- By MIKE WARD, television critic

Not because they're insane - although they might be that as well - but because in April 1978, a song about Lowry spent three weeks at the top of the charts.

Performed by a duo called Brian and Michael, it effectively served as a crash course for those yet to be acquainted with Lowry's work. What the listener would learn was that Laurence Stephen Lowry, born in Stretford in 1887, "painted match-stalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs".

You can hear him explain why he did that on tonight's programme.