Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Red Button, happy birthday to you!

It is 10 years since the BBC launched its first pilot of the Red Button in the UK. And two years since Channel 4 dumped the interactive service, its chief executive Andy Duncan branding it "clunky and inefficient".

So who was right – Channel 4's Duncan or BBC director general Mark Thompson? There's only one way to find out. Fight!



I worry that I don't use the red button enough. But on the odd occasion when my mind has flickered towards the irritating little icon in the corner of the screen, I have found it an oddly unsatisfying experience.

The interactive news pages are slow to load and irritating to use. It is hardly surprising that it suffers in comparison with the web, but I sometimes find myself yearning for the good old analogue days of Teletext.

Anyone else remember Debbie's Diary on 4-Tel? Thought not.

I also hit red for Strictly Come Dancing's "expert commentary" on the celebrity contestants – while they were dancing! Exciting in theory, entirely unenlightening in practice, I switched off.

Then there is the opportunity, during big live football matches – there are not quite as many of these as there used to be on the BBC – to switch to an alternative commentary, such as BBC Radio 5 Live. This I quite like - if only to avoid Motty.

In the main the red button is of most use during big events, such as Wimbledon, the Olympics and Glastonbury, where you can break away from the main channel and watch something of particular interest to you.

But in this respect it is not so much "interactive" as a whole load of extra TV channels that come and go on demand.

Still, if it's interactive you want, you can have it. To mark its 10th birthday, red button fans are being treated to an EastEnders quiz, Bob the Builder karaoke and a whole load of other stuff I won't be touching with a 10 foot remote.

But it must have something going for it, with 11 million people hitting the red button every week. Eat that, Andy Duncan!

The BBC has also come up with their 10 top Red Button highlights from the last 10 years. Woo-hoo!

There is no word yet on whether the Red Button will be hosting a 10th birthday party, attended by all his best buddies – Set Top Box, Wireless Willy, Dave DAB radio, Barry BlackBerry, Ian iPlayer, Ione Sky+…

Anyway, here are those top 10 moments, according to the BBC. How were they for you?

1. Test The Nation, the UK's "first truly interactive quiz", says the BBC, which has been back 16 times since it launched in 2002. I did the first one. Not bothered since.



2. In 2002 the Chelsea Flower Show "brought interactivity to a new audience". Green fingers, red button.



3. The BBC's live music coverage has been interactive since 2003 - Glastonbury, T in the Park, Reading and Leeds, the BBC Proms…



4. In 2004, BBC Red Button broadcast a live interview from an astronaut orbiting in the international space station – a first for interactive television. Missed it.



5. BBC Northern Ireland staged its first ever interactive quiz in 2004 – Would You Pass the Eleven Plus?



6. Strictly Come Dancing's Len Goodman got behind the Red Button in 2005 to teach viewers a different dance each week.



7. More than half-a-million viewers pressed red to watch extended coverage and access up-to-the-minute results from the UK General Election in 2005.



8. "Fans of Doctor Who have been accessing weekly episode commentaries from the likes of Russell T Davies and David Tennant since 2006". I have only seen one Who episode since Eccleston left. How wrong am I?



9. CBeebies favourites Charlie and Lola went interactive in 2007 with an exclusive premiere of a new song and some corking karaoke. I love a singalong! Maybe they could do a David Bowie one.

10. The 2008 Beijing Olympics saw the launch of the new Sport Multiscreen, featuring up to six different streams, plus news, results and statistics.