FRED Dibhah has been named as one of the top 40 "most eccentric" presenters on television.

The Bolton steeplejack who has forged a second, successful career as a TV personality, appears in the list in this week's Radio Times.

He is referred to as "a myopic steeplejack who became Britain's best-loved and most ferocious preserver of our industrial heritage".

Also includied in the list are the likes of astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, art historian Sister Wendy and racing pundit John McCririck.

It also includes Jim'll Fix It's Sir Jimmy Savile and the Two Fat Ladies, Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright.

Men outnumber women when it comes to eccentricity, but TV's female ambassadors include animal trainer Barbara Woodhouse, and Dr Ruth Westheimer, the "tiny German/Jewish grandmother who lit up British TV by discussing sexual peccadilloes".

The magazine describes an eccentric as "someone who isn't the physical sort normally associated with presentation, but through force of personality, knowledge of their subject and sheer bug-eyed passion, elbows their way onto the screen."

It says: "There are some hard and fast rules. They're rarely youthful. Young people acting strangely aren't eccentric: they're either attention-seekers or irritating twits.

"The rule is even firmer for women: unless they're past child-bearing age, or have taken holy orders, it's very hard for them to be eccentric."

Peter Bazalgette of Endemol, the TV company behind Big Brother, told the Radio Times that the proliferation of TV channels has squeezed out many eccentrics.

He said: "There are more channels and more airspace, but a great deal of it is filled with good-looking, slim wannabes.

"In the past people just sort of fell into TV by accident; now it's more of a sausage machine."