It's hard to imagine a world without it now, but there was a time before Phoenix Nights. Back in 2000, Peter Kay put out That Peter Kay Thing, a six-part series that showcased six different sets of places and people. After the motorway-services-based pilot, the first episode proper featured a working men's club called The Neptune, and its ambitious proprietor, Brian Potter. That club was ultimately doomed, but Potter would rise again.

The next episode of That Peter Kay Thing also featured stage-based entertainment. Eyes Down was all about the Apollo Bingo Hall, and you can't help wondering if that might have made a series, too. Kay played Tom Dale, a bingo caller who loves himself even more than his elderly clientele do: it's a branch of the entertainment industry that you don't hear much about these days, bingo calling, but a lot of budding comedians probably branched out into that, years ago.

Nowadays we chiefly think of bingo as an internet-based pastime, of course, and it's easy to find the best bingo sites online from your smartphone at comparison websites like Bingo Sites. Which means that a wider range of people now play the game regularly, in comparison to the older image that Kay was eulogising. And even that show was 20 years ago now. But what would have happened if Eyes Down had become a popular series too, and Tom Dale a Potter-like legend? Would bingo callers be cult figures?

As an aside, there was actually a different sitcom called Eyes Down in the end - starring Paul O'Grady (pictured).

You wouldn't be at all surprised if bingo clubs had attracted a younger audience all of their own, if there was the faintest possibility of seeing a real-life Tom Ward in action; and some trendy bingo nights had already begun to spring up. But then maybe other episodes would have attracted a following too, if they'd gone to series.

Episode 3 of That Peter Kay Thing was The Ice Cream Man Cometh, and featured Kay as the frustrated occupier of a struggling ice cream van; which must be a tricky line of work at the best of times, when you think about it, in a less-than-tropical climate like the UK. Where would those practitioners of freezing-cold comestibles be these days without music festivals and wedding receptions, although even they were barely happening in 2020?

Perhaps a whole van-based series might have made ice cream men cool - excuse the pun - but then a follow-up series of The Ice Cream Cometh would have been tricky anyway. By the end of that Peter Kay Thing episode his character, Mr Softee Top, had finally flipped out about his flaky business, given it up and gone into a much saucier line of work. The question is, was he making hundreds and thousands?

In truth, it's hard to imagine any of the other characters from That Peter Kay Thing having the lasting impact of Brian Potter, and the rest of his memorably motley crew of colleagues, many of whom were played by fellow members of the North West comedy circuit. If anyone knows about the ups and downs of northern clubs, it's them.