Facts and stick figures

Pick of the day LS LOWRY: THE UNHEARD TAPES, BBC2, 9PM

- By MIKE WARD, television critic

FINE ART: Researcher Angela Barratt, above and Sir Ian McKellen as revered artist LS Lowry

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

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 matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs”.