18 months ago, I posted about how Channel 4, despite spending what seemed to be the entire GDP of a small country on The Simpsons, didn’t seem all that fussed about actually, you know, showing any new episodes.

After that, the series did return – but not until August 2006, when it was shoved at 8.30pm opposite Coronation Streetmost weeks to make way for the appalling Unanimous. Unfortunately the run also featured some of the worst episodes of the entire series including the truly dreadful “Weekend at Burnsie’s” and “Blame It On Lisa”. The run ended at Christmas, before the Friday night slot was booked up for six months by Ugly Betty, and it’s been the same old teatime repeats since then.

But now, it’s back! But… at four o’clock on Sunday afternoons! And with absolutely no publicity, so much so that I didn’t even realise they were back on. What was the point of C4 buying this series? You never saw them bugger around this much with Friends. It means the repeats have a substantially higher profile than the brand new episodes.

But if, like me, you’ve missed the start of this run (which fortunately I saw most of on Sky One before they fell out with Virgin Media), don’t worry, because the series one repeats start again at teatime next week. So the much-hyped 400th episode will seemingly be flung out on T4 in four years time while the 400th repeat of “Call of the Simpsons” gets a prime-time outing.