I made a brilliant discovery today. Something I've been trying to get hold of, on and off, for ages now. The mid-90s BBC News theme tunes.

I'll admit up front that I probably enjoy news jingles more than any ordinary person should, but I like the whole idea of a piece of music designed entirely to make you think 'NEWS!'. Not only that, but 'NEWS!' followed by 'I should really watch this'. That can't be easy, and I imagine if I sat down to create my own news theme tune, it would end up making most people think 'DYING COW! Better not go anywhere near the telly while that dying cow's making that dying noise'.

So why the mid-90s BBC News, and not the current BBC News?

The current BBC News just doesn't quite sit with me. All that 'DOOM-doom'... for a start, how depressing to have a jingle that announces the news with a sound like 'doom', however appropriate. And that's really all there is to the current BBC News music: that double drum beat, some beeping, and one chord change. Seriously, count the chords you can hear in it, I swear there's two notes played and that's your lot. It doesn't seem very imaginative or inspiring somehow. Get hold of the full minute-long BBC News 24 'we've got nothing better to do for the next minute til the headlines' jingle instead, which has about six different notes in it instead (how lavish of them).

The whole point, for me, of the news jingle is to make the hair on your neck stand up by the time it finishes, so you really, really want to know what news there is that needs such important music. By the time you get to the final five seconds of that BBC News 24 minute, that's happened. Never happens with the quick BBC News version.

Nope, it's the mid-90s for me. Same short amount of time, but all the power and gravitas you could ask for. It's like having Michael Buerk sat in front of you saying 'we will fight them on the beaches to bring you The News'. Full orchestra, strings, kettle drums, sexy blue 'virtual studio', the works.

I've also got an attachment to the mid-90s jingles because they were around when I'd just reached the age where the news made some kind of sense. I can remember a newsflash about the Gulf War in 1991, that's the first proper bit of news I know I saw and vaguely understood. But by around 1995 or 1996, I'd be sat in front of the telly at six o'clock waiting for that orchestra to swing into action and scream 'NEWS!' at me.

So it's great to have found them again. It's less about being a radio geek and wanting to find any old jingle, and more about this being the sound of the BBC when I was growing up. Although what I didn't realise was that there were three quite different versions of the news theme - one for 1pm, one for 6pm and one for 9pm:

- The one o'clock version's very pacey, skipping and frolicking along in a 'NEWS! But this is only the news so far, there's still loads left to happen today' sort of way.

- The six o'clock has a massively pensive opening, like the opening drumroll of a West End musical, warning you there's an epic half hour on the way.

- And the nine o'clock has soaring strings breaking into a full fanfare to close the day - listen to this one if you want proper doom-doom drum noises in a news theme, none of your bland twenty-first century crap.

Right then, so that's your little news theme briefing. Now go here and check them all out.

I might also add I never knew most of the blue news studio was computer-generated, including the glass insignia/globe at the front. I'm not sure if I feel amazed or betrayed. I always wanted to see that studio for real when I was younger! Now I'm faced with the sudden realisation that it never properly existed. Those bastards!