Nigella (ITV1): THE big TV question this week concerns Nigella Lawson. Is she an ITV woman or more of a C4 girl? And, perhaps more importantly, is she an afternoon or an evening person?

Matters such as Makosi's miracle pregnancy (or not) in Big Brother and Sharon's odd new look in EastEnders pale in comparison with the Nigella poser.

ITV struck gold when they allotted Paul O'Grady his own daily talk show. This has proved a winner with viewers and critics. I fear that Nigella may be last across the line in the ratings race. Much as I admire her, her daily early afternoon show - whose title Nigella is as imaginative as its content - is a bad idea.

She's the type of TV cook with whom you want to curl up on the sofa with the lights turned low as she spoon feeds you one of her cream-soaked desserts. Somehow watching her in daylight with a Greggs pasty in your hand doesn't have quite the same effect.

Nigella the programme tries to be all things to all men. Or rather, to all women. For her new show is screened at a time when TV schedulers assume grown men have better things to do than watch TV and that the majority of the audience are female.

Not only is she required to cook but also to interview celebrities (just one a day, mind you), try to solve people's problems, discuss polls about sex and engage in chit-chat with a couple of chums.

First shows are always difficult but whoever decided to book Hollywood actor Val Kilmer as her opening guest should be reprimanded. He's not known as a chatty man and proved this as he sat looking bemused and mostly silent as Nigella kept saying how pleased she was to see him.

The second day, Terry Wogan proved a more jovial lunchtime companion - he can be funny and entertaining - and Nigella looked more confident coping with the demands of live television.

But the damage had been done. I couldn't bring myself to tune in the next day.

Please bring back the Nigella we know and love. The one who makes TV cooking sexy, enjoyable and sneaks down to the fridge in the early hours for a nibble. Don't waste her on inane chat and here today, gone tomorrow celebrities.

Something is clearly wrong with a TV programme in which a demonstration of her wondrous new gadget - a cherry stoner - proves more interesting and more animated than anything else on view. Kilmer, to his disgrace, was certainly more taken by that than the hostess with the mostest.

Published: 08/07/2005