CHILDREN'S TV legend Glen Michael doesn't look too kindly on many of today's television shows for young kids.

The average show, he says, consists of two presenters speaking extremely quickly while moving at a "demented" pace.

And he hates it when presenters "talk down" to kids, who, he knows, are "far too intelligent" to be patronised.

"I think there's a terrible sameness to these shows, as if they're all out of the same box," Glen said.

"They've all been told to keep it bright, smile a lot, jump about a bit, get a custard pie in the face. There's no individualism."

When someone like Glen delivers his verdict on such shows, you listen - because this is the man behind Glen Michael's Cartoon Cavalcade, the much-loved STV show that entertained millions of kids during its 26 year run.

He was hugely popular with generations of children, not to mention their mums and dads.

The show first went out in April 1966. When the last episode was screened, in December 1992, Glen attended a small going-away party at STV in Cowcaddens, and was almost moved to tears when programme controller Gus Macdonald paid tribute to him.

Macdonald told Glen that he had played to more than two billion viewers in the show's lengthy run and added: "I don't think we'll ever see the likes of that again in television. It's the end of an era."

Afterwards, as Glen recounts in his forthcoming autobiography, Life's A Cavalcade, he sat alone in his dressing-room chair, sipping at the remains of a glass of champagne, "still in full make-up and wearing my colourful Cavalcade clothes.

"No watch, no cheque, just the immediate memory of some very nice people trying to make me feel good after my last TV appearance," he writes.

"It was a sad time, really," Glen, now 82, said yesterday.

"I'd got to an age when they perhaps thought a children's show should have somebody younger presenting it - although the last people to complain about that would have been the children."

But, he reflects, he's had a good life, and been able to do almost every-thing, from singing opera to doing ballet.

"A utility man, I think is the expression," he adds.

Glen's book, published later this month, reveals a remarkable showbiz career and personal life.

At one point his father, Arthur, an itinerant butler, applied for a domestic post with acting legend Sir Laurence Olivier.

According to Glen, Arthur had the nerve to ask Olivier if he would be willing to help his son's theatrical career.

"This was a question that Sir Laurence evidently thought should never have been asked, and he said so quite forcibly," Glen records.

"He basically told him to get stuffed and just left the building," Glen said, laughing at the memory.

"My dad was quite a character. If he'd been a stage performer or a writer he'd have been a star.

"But he was just one of those unfortunate people who always made the wrong turning, and it didn't quite work out.

"I'm afraid my mother and I were dragged along with him.

"Yes, it was a pretty tough childhood, but there was an awful lot of laughter, with him particularly."

Glen was born Cecil Buckland in Paignton, Devon, in May 1926. When he was seven, he and his older brother, Gerald, both got measles.

Gerald, who was just 12, developed mastoiditis and died. Glen was too unwell to attend the funeral.

Arthur and his wife Mabel, with Glen in tow, worked as butler and chef at a succession of houses, and staying at a long line of bed-and-breakfasts, disrupting Glen's education.

At one stage, Arthur was arrested for obtaining board and lodgings by false pretences - leaving a B&B without paying the bill - and spent six months in prison.

At the age of 17 Glen decided to seek his fortune in London's theatres.

He ended up working in the famous Gang Shows in the RAF, and graduated to films - he had a role as an extra in one film, Anna Karenina, which starred Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richardson, and a good role in The Blue Lamp, in which Dirk Bogarde played a young cop-killer.

In 1952, Glen - by now married with an 18-month-old baby - journeyed to Paisley's Victory Theatre to work alongside Jack Milroy.

It was to be the start of a long friendship. In time, they both took part in the famous Five Past Eight shows and Half Past Seven shows in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and in the Francie and Josie TV series, which starred Milroy and Rikki Fulton.

Glen, his wife Beryl and their two young children were living in a caravan, as this was better suited to their nomadic life.

The fact that they were able to buy a house of their own - a three-bed flat in Hyndland, in the West End - was down to Rikki, the book reveals.

Glen says that though some people thought Rikki standoffish, "in actual fact he could be the kindest and most thoughtful of people at work and play."

Rikki, it emerges, asked Glen to meet him at his bank - and stunned Glenn by saying he would act as guarantor, and Glenn would get as much money as he needed in order to buy a house or flat. "Well, you'll never do it on your own," said Rikki, laughing.

Fulton, who died in January 2004, also features in one of the book's best anecdotes: a golf foursome with Glen, industrialist Ian Stewart and 007 himself, Sean Connery.

They all ventured out onto Old Course.

During the game, Glen swung at the ball with his trusty 3 wood - and all four men watched in fascination as the ball landed on a railway engine pulling a line of empty coal wagons along the nearby rail line.

The ball came to rest in the last wagon - and disappeared into the distance.

Rikki, doffing his cap, said gravely: "Glen, that'll be the longest drive today!"

"I've never laughed so much in my life," says Glen.