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Happy New Year Rock Actioners and Actionettes! I trust you had a fantastic festive 'season'.

Mine involved all of the following:

1. A festive Embrace show at London 's Alexandra Palace which featured malfunctioning curtains (Danny McNamara: "The crowd doesn't care about that!" Richard McNamara: "Aye, but they didn't pay for it, did they?"), festive cover versions (Greg Lake's I Believe In Father Christmas) and a rendition of Fireworks so heart-wrenching that it caused even the assembled serious geezers to have a "there's something in my eye" moment.

2. Battle stopping their gig at 6 Music's Club Fandango so that one of their fans could propose to his girlfriend. Awww. Let's hope she said yes.

3. A record company party that featured the assembled 6 Music staff dancing so badly to Madonna's Hung Up that Madge's antics in the video looked like the final of Strictly Come Dancing in comparison.

4. Boxing Day afternoon in Basingstoke A&E (it's a long story).

But all of this is nothing compared to my New Year's Day. You probably stayed in bed until the afternoon before crawling out for a bacon sandwich and a rubbish film on the telly at ultra-low volume. Lightweights. In the absence of any proper gigs us true, hardcore Rock Actioners were up early and off to Hammersmith Apollo, aka The Spiritual Home Of Rock Action, for what's likely to be the most visceral, sense-shattering live 'experience' of 2006. Yes, I'm talking about ...


CBeebies Live
Hammersmith Apollo, London, Jan 1

For those without the benefit of young children, CBeebies live is like a festival, except featuring men in gonk suits rather than bands. In fact, there are so many heavyweight kids TV favourites here, that it's like The Carling Weekend of kids live shows. Tellypalooza, if you will.

But don't go thinking this is an experience for the faint-hearted. Even if I didn't have a stinking hangover and had enjoyed more than two hours sleep, it would be pretty scary. As I do and I haven't, it's terrifying.

To The Kids, however - and this time I really do mean The Kids - this is nirvana as a mind-boggling array of TV favourites zip by, with the only humans on stage being Sarah-Jane and Justin, two individuals so insanely perky that they make those of us who enjoyed a traditional Hogmanay feel really quite ill.

But, really, this is all about the gonks. Biggest hit with my daughter are The Tweenies, four garishly-clad humanoid figures with brightly-coloured faces and a line in pop music so upbeat they make Sarah-Jane and Justin look like Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen after some particularly bad news.

They don't do much for my headache but light relief is on the way in the form of Roly Mo, the genial storyteller from The Fimbles (I'm, er, reliably informed) who does a cookery spot that is proper old skool funny. He's the roliest mo you'll ever know, apparently. Respect!

That aside, there's not a lot for the Dads - unless you count the fact that the 'supergroup' at the end, made up of various Tweenies, Bob The Builder, Pingu et al is called Beige, like they're a failed Britpop band or something. Although even Menswear didn't resort to playing souped-up versions of nursery rhymes to get The Kids onside.

But that's as nothing compared to Bill & Ben (yes, they are still going, apparently) who, erm, 'treat' the little ones to a dustbin clanging percussion extravaganza. No, really. It might just be my hangover but it's frighteningly reminiscent of watching Einsturzende Neubauten.

After a spurious X-Factor type sub-plot, it all ends with the entire cast on-stage singing a version of S Club 7's Reach so insanely cheerful that makes the original resemble Disintegration -era Cure playing Morrissey's most miserable hits. The Kids love it. The Dads are just grateful that we're only a £12 T-shirt away from a swift hair of the dog. And no, I'm not talking about Doodles, The Tweenies' faithful hound.

Stop the year! I want to get off ...