FOR anybody who switched on a television set in the Sixties and Seventies – and especially somebody who was brought up in that era – the death of Val Doonican, last week, was a moment for reflection.

The Val Doonican Show was essential Saturday night viewing in those days, and even more so after we acquired colour TVs and could fully appreciate those lurid jumpers that were his trademark.

But if, like me, you were a kid back then, the man was an enigma, full of contradictions.

For a start, we couldn’t quite work out why Val wasn’t female, like the other Valeries we knew: Singleton and Ken Barlow’s ill-fated wife on Coronation Street.

And another thing about Val was he was Irish. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been anybody quite as Irish as Val Doonican.

As we grow up, we learn about simple Irish charm and how God was far too generous towards them when he was sharing it out, but it also became apparent that the one who got the biggest share was Val.

And this was completely at odds with what the telly was telling us about Ireland and Irish people, especially after 1969, when every news report had something in it about death and destruction on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry. How could an island in such turmoil produce such a sweetie?

And then there was the easy listening music and that incredibly laid back image he had. In an era when the world was craving rock music, he gave us rocking chairs.

He even famously became the one to knock The Beatles off the top of the album charts after Sgt Pepper in 1967. And – as if to rub our noses in it – that album was called Val Doonican Rocks, But Gently.

We should have hated him. In fact, we loved him.

It was partly to do with the novelty value of songs like Delaney’s Donkey, O’Rafferty’s Motor Car and the legendary Paddy McGinty’s Goat, but even a young lad like me couldn’t also be unmoved by the beauty of songs like Elusive Butterfly, along with Val’s effortless delivery.

So, you see, I always loved Val Doonican, and when he also turned up on Parkinson and told the touching story of the death of his father, it made him even more the unlikely hero. Away from the telly he also showed himself to be a brilliant watercolour artist.

But in the last two or three years I’ve come to appreciate Val Doonican even more.

That’s because a few of those other stars we welcomed into our living rooms and became part of our childhood turned out to be unworthy, having been exposed as sexual predators.

It was bad enough that they included household names we didn’t particularly like, such as Jimmy Saville, but then we got to know the truth about people we did like, including Stuart Hall and – worst of all – Rolf Harris.

So thank you, Val, for restoring our faith.

As sad as it was to hear of his passing, it was – to use a Doonicanesque word – smashing to read his daughter refer to him as “a delightful man”.

“I don’t think there’s a person in the world that would have a bad thing to say about him,” she said. “He was every bit as lovely as he appeared on television. There was no nasty side to him at all. He was a delightful, delightful man.”

Which is, more or less, what stars are supposed to be, and which we always assumed they were.

They say the angel with the whiskers on is Paddy McGinty’s Goat – and he’s in good company.