Tony Miles vs Bent Larsen in The Master Game, 1981

This may look dated now, but it in its day it was groundbreaking. When the BBC tried to sell The Master Game, a series of televised chess tournaments, to other national broadcasters, they were told: "We've tried doing chess on television, but it doesn't work." Then the representatives of those stations  heard the players apparently voicing their thoughts during the game and bought the programme.

Those thoughts were recorded immediately after the game, though not every player was as eloquent as these two, who were both heroes of mine.

Tony Miles was the first English grandmaster. Only a few years before he secured that title in 1976, the notion that anyone from this country could achieve the title had seemed fanciful. Bent Larsen had been the strongest Western player after Bobby Fischer throughout the 1960s. As happens with your youthful heroes, they are now both dead.

And this is a great game. Larsen gets what looks like a winning attack with his home-made opening, only for Miles to stay in the game thanks to a series of precise defensive moves. Miles then goes on to win with an idea straight out of a composed chess problem.

One of the best things about The Master Game was the way it showed grandmasters were human. In the West we had grown up believing they were superhumans who always saw 20 moves ahead, but both Larsen and Miles admit at various points here that they're not sure what is happening in the game. That made club players like me feel less inadequate.

And if the analyst Bill Hartston, who was briefly England's top chess player at the start of the Seventies, looks familiar, it's because he appeared on Gogglebox for many years.