SEVENTY-five years ago this week, the British Broadcasting Corporation started to air the world’s first regular TV service. No need to ask what happened next; millions of us already know. In no particular order, Faith Eckersall shares her most memorable TV moments. Do you agree?

The Fall of the Twin Towers (2001)

I’d just picked the kids up from school as a favour to a friend and as I arrived, she called me in to the house. ‘Why are you watching films in the afternoon?’ I asked her, as the Twin Towers flashed up on the box and a plane hurtled towards them.

‘It’s not a film,’ she answered quietly.

‘It’s happening now’.

The appalling, terrible grace with which the Towers collapsed remains the defining news image of my lifetime.

David Attenborough and the Mountain Gorillas (1979)

It’s supposed to be him meeting them.

But in reality, it’s they who are meeting him and his sheer, unbridled, child-like joy in the occasion means I never get tired of watching it.

The Rugby World Cup Final (2003)

Of course we would lose because England doesn’t do winning, does it?

Then, with just 23 seconds until the final whistle, Jonny Wilkinson gets the ball and takes the split-second, make-or-break decision to send it off his right boot to deliver our greatest sporting moment since 1966.

The Funeral of Princess Diana (2007)

It was the culmination of one of the most extraordinary weeks in this country’s recent history, contrasting the gilded, solemn magnificence of the service at Westminster Abbey and the public outpouring of grief with that tiny, handwritten card on her coffin wreath, bearing the simple word ‘Mummy’.

Del Boy and Rodney Become Millionaires (1996)

Twenty-five million of us settled down that Christmas to watch our favourite entrepreneurs achieve their lifetimes’ ambition – but not before we’d seen them through dating, marriage, miscarriage, childbirth, funerals and that bit where Del falls through the bar. For me, this was THE comedy of our times.

The Death of Edmund Blackadder (1989)

Six episodes of gallows humour during Blackadder Goes Forth still didn’t prepare me – or any of my student mates – for the shock of what happened at the end as our heroes go over the top, are gunned down, and fade slowly off the screen to a piano solo, in a scene that still makes me weep every time I see it.

Poignant, elegant TV.

Thriller by Michael Jackson (1983)

Despite it being just 14 minutes long, the delighted BBC treated it like a gala performance and we duly settled down to watch its much-hyped premiere on TV.

It was the zenith of Jackson’s existence as an entertainer; music, dance and a stunning concept executed to perfection.

Michael Portillo loses his seat in the General Election (1997)

The water-cooler moment from an election that was on fire from the moment it was announced. Portillo’s face encapsulates the confusion, agony and hubris of a party from whom the power was visibly draining away.

Nelson Mandela walks free (1990)

It was the middle of my birthday lunch. But who cared about that when we were about to witness the righting of one of the greatest wrongs in history?

The wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton (2011)

Pomp, circumstance, a fabulous frock and the joyous realisation that in the joyful marriage of her son, the story of Princess Diana finally got its happy ending.