WHEN I was little my toys used to come to life whenever I was asleep or out of the room. Fact.

How else could my Sindy doll get from the bottom of my bed, where I’d left her looking after Tiny Tears, all the way to her own bed and even manage to pull the little red and white gingham cover over herself?

And how come no matter how many times I corralled the horses, the sheep, the rhino and the triceratops into my farm pen, the dino and the rhino always managed to break free, climb into my toybox and close the lid?

My mum and dad swore it was nothing to do with them, and when an Etch-a-Sketch masterpiece got wiped overnight, my suspicions were confirmed.

I also knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that as soon as the lights went out, a monster would be lurking in my cupboard and the scary thing under my bed would be back, waiting to grab my ankle if I were ever foolish enough to let my foot touch the floor.

The people at Pixar knew all this too and even made films about them.

Toy Story was my story. Woody was Sindy, Rex was my triceratops and my Etch-a-Sketch played a cameo.

In Monsters Inc. Sulley was the hulking cupboard monster and Randall was most definitely my bedland bad boy reincarnated.

Like me, they also knew that all cars have faces and some families are made up of people with secret super powers.

They even knew something I didn’t, which is that, provided you use enough of them, you can rip an entire house out of its foundations and make it fly up in the air using only balloons.

Pixar films are a joy because they are the familiar made spectacular by people who have never forgotten their childhood dreams and fears, and who still regard the world through the eyes of the young, with their limitless imaginations, irrational terrors and love of the ridiculous.

So Pixar: 25 Magic Moments (BBC1, Monday), a show celebrating the 25th anniversary of the animation studios, featuring all the most iconic clips from their movies was a bit of a treat, because even though, like most homes around the globe, we have all the movies, I now only get to see snippets of them while delivering drinks, food, pencils, wipes or whatever else my two daughters demand while glued to them themselves.

There were also great talking heads in the shape of Billy Crystal, Tim Allen, Holly Hunter, Kelsey Grammer, Michael Keaton and George Lucas as they told the story of the evolution of the company, which was also fascinating, in a super-geeky kind of way.

“We wanted to be different to Disney,” said Pixar boss, John Lassiter, who started off actually working for the House of Mouse, was then sacked for liking CGI too much, set up his own alternative animation house, and then, one assumes, sat back with a massive grin on his face as Disney forked out squillions to get involved with his company.

I’ll never diss Disney, Beauty and The Beast and Bambi (the first film to make me cry as a kid) are celluloid perfection in my mind, but the consistent exuberance and inventiveness of the Toy Story series, the touching father-son drama of Finding Nemo and the ethereal beauty of Wall.E are hard to beat on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Though for me, Up soars above them all, demonstrating why these films, without us even noticing, have become as much a part of our lives as Snow White, Pinocchio and The Lion King.

All you get is a grumpy old man, a wee unloved boy and a dream. That’s it. And yet, after a liberal sprinkling of Pixar dust, it is one of the most magical, emotional and spectacular things you’ll see. And those opening scenes? I warned a friend about the start, and, if you’ve never seen it, I’m warning you too, it will take you completely by surprise, especially if you’ve lost your Kleenex.

Which I could have done with to wipe away the tears of laughter during Tuesday’s semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent (er, it sooo hasn’t) on ITV1, 7.30pm.

The panel, pumped with more Botox than the whole of LA, sat with rictus grins and untroubled foreheads as a man murdered Mandy, not Holden, but the song.

They told him, however, he was good, because they know that the paying voters like him, which means he’s a bit of a cash cow-ell.

Then came a familiar-looking trick Britney (aka Lorna Bliss) who had already been so rubbish, she’d got the boot in the early auditions.

So why was she back? Well, apparently, the Hoff woke up the other day and suddenly remembered that even though she’d sounded more like Brittany Ferries than Britney Spears, she’d at least shown her bum and her three-penny bits a lot, so – another potential cash cow-ell, this time ‘for the dads.’ Except, instead of flashing her lady bits, the daft bint attempted to actually sing while moving. In a plastic raincoat.

She let herself down, she let Britney down, but worse, according to the gargantuan talent that is David Hasselhoff, she forgot to let her pants down.