Until a few weeks ago, I harboured serious concerns that the only historical narrative that mattered on British television was the English one. So gluttonous have Home Counties commissioning editors become for the English historical perspective that there are now almost as many historians on television as chefs.

My favourite telly historian is Simon Schama who is all camp languor as he describes some medieval evisceration in the manner of a Cholmondeley vicar offering Victoria sponge to the choirmistress after evensong. At the opposite end of the quality scale is the deeply unpleasant David Starkey. You can never concentrate on the history that Starkey narrates because you keep trying to picture what it would be like if it were him being beheaded and disembowelled rather than the hapless subjects of his studies. I know Niall Ferguson isn't everyone's goblet of mead but I have never failed to be enchanted by his historical series. Not only is he from Maryhill but, in his brilliant work, The Ascent of Money, he describes in one chapter how the statistical theories of a bibulous Church of Scotland minister and his drinking pal in 17th-century Edinburgh created the global life assurance industry.

Nothing about English life, culture and manners, it seems, is considered too twee and obscure for television. Thus, in the continuing national quest to lend meaning to Michael Portillo's life after Enfield in 1997, the BBC asked the Cambridge graduate to bring us something on Great British Railway Journeys. And if you still feel you are vulnerable in some areas of the history of English railways after that, then Dan Snow, an Oxford graduate, is your man with his Locomotion: Dan Snow's History of Railways. Neither of them though, has even an ounce of the passion and knowledge in this area than that possessed by Fred Dibnah, the belting Bolton steeplejack.

One of the highlights of last month's entire television output was a delightful and erudite one-off gem that went out on BBC4 and was commissioned, created and delivered in Scotland. It ought to have reminded BBC Scotland chiefs at Pacific Quay just how dramatic, vibrant and vivid is our own nation's historical narrative. Scotland's Greatest Warrior, the inspirational story of Jamie Graham, the 1st Marquis of Montrose, a man whose life and achievements were genuinely noble, heroic and Scottish, was beautifully narrated by Professor Ted Cowan, director of Glasgow University's Dumfries campus. The fact that the overwhelming majority of literate Scots have never heard of Montrose the great 17th-century warrior poet is depressing, but not surprising. It is a consequence of the pernicious neglect of Scottish history by generations of educationists who were acting as wretched Scottish Labour party quislings.

Better to keep our children ignorant about the political, cultural and spiritual development of their country than risk driving them into the arms of the Scottish nationalists. There are still some clowns in the Scottish Labour party who continue to oppose the recent introduction of a Scottish history higher on these grounds. The story of Montrose and his journey from covenanter to royalist to betrayal by his king is a titanic one. His genius as a military commander made him known all over Europe and his battle strategies have provided the blueprint for generations of army officers from West Point to the Baltic.

It's not as if there is no material for more BBC Scotland-produced shows about our nation's history. In the run-up to the independence referendum, there ought to be an entire series being commissioned right now. Each part would be narrated by one of our most eminent historians, such as Professor Tom Devine, Professor Richard Finlay and Professor Cowan himself.

Next month sees the eagerly awaited publication of After Flodden by Rosemary Goring, one of Scotland's leading newspaper columnists and literary critics. BBC Scotland should be making it the basis of a series this year to coincide with the 500th anniversary of this seismic event in our history and be soliciting Ms Goring's services in scripting and narrating it. Soon the anniversary of the beginning of the Great War will be upon us and with it the opportunity to describe the tales of the lost youth of poor urban and rural Scotland.

Television's current obsession with "History" will pass soon enough. Eventually it will be replaced by "Gardening" and then "Children". So let's all capitalise on it while it's at the front of the public's consciousness. Already we've been transfixed by the discovery of Richard III's body under a Leicester car park and there is good reason to suggest that a pair of Scottish kings – John Balliol and James I – may be buried under a post office in Doncaster and a car park in Perth respectively. Aside from the possibility that the three deid kings may all point to the biggest and oldest game of hide and seek, there are surely other intriguing possibilities.

How many more famous old punters are buried beneath the concrete pillars of Britain's municipal infrastructure? More importantly, how many more could we contrive to have discovered clad in the ragged raiment of a 16th- or 17th-century person of historical significance? All that would be required is a skeleton and some old clothes that would pass muster at the carbon dating. Then we just need to produce a list of famous historical figures whose bodies have yet to turn up. Henry Hudson, the intrepid, and bearded, British explorer springs to mind.

As Scotland prepares for its Year of Homecoming in 2014, not to mention the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, I think it's time we started planting a few more old corpses underneath public buildings in a manner that suggests they've been there for hundreds of years. It would fire up the nation's collective imagination and get us all interested in history once more.

And who wasn't charmed and edified by the triumphant performance on Friday night of John Savage on Mastermind? The Falkirk tool salesman chose history as his specialist subject… the history of Celtic FC. You've got to start somewhere.