Today is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, and it seemed appropriate to remember what this meant to me as a young child watching this live back in 1969 on a grainy black and white TV

At the time, the kids of my generation were transfixed my the Apollo programme and by the moon landing. We had been brought up on a diet of "Dr Who" and "Thunderbirds", and to have a real life space adventure in front of our eyes was truly very exciting.

In some ways, the fate of the NASA programme seemed a microcosm of life itself, from child-like optimism to adult reality and perhaps, ultimately, disappointment.

I still remember the TV programmes on BBC with the ebullient James Burke and Patrick Moore. I had all the Saturn rockets, lunar modules etc as Airfix models.

I recently saw the Lunar module and astronaut gear at London's science museum. It is staggering that those guys got to the moon and back in such primitive gear.

My generation, that of Barack Obama too, sits uncomfortably between Baby Boomers and Gen X. The phrase "Generation Jones" has been coined for us, but for me, I prefer "Generation Apollo".

It was just such a defining era of my life.