WHEN a wife wants to sit in the driving seat it's usually best not to stand in her way.

Thus The Great British Driving Test: Men v Women (Monday, ITV1), which should have provided 90 minutes of high octane excitement, was forced off the road in favour of Child Of Our Time (BBC1, Tuesday) because, basically, we'd done more taping than viewing this week.

"I don't want to watch Neil Fox and Gaby Logan because they are both up their own backsides... and anyway the programme is just a rip-off of BBC's Test The Nation," I was informed.

The third taped contender, Celebrity Fit Club (ITV, Tuesday) was viewed with similar suspicion because "it's Freddie Starr and he isn't funny".

True to form, the overblown funny-man dropped his trousers and smoked in all the wrong places.

My wife survived this heavyweight torment for some time, mainly because celebrities great and small are joining her in the annual war against the extra inches.

"Most of them weigh far more than me and at least I look in better shape," she confessed. Although presenter Lowri Turner is more in the small-scale league and shocked diet expert Adam Casey by losing six pounds in a week while last year's champion Jono Coleman dropped double that amount.

Ironically, both were adjudged "failures" because this level of weight loss was deemed unsustainable.

The curiosity is Starr's rival team captain Vanessa Feltz who has yo-yoed between fat and super-slim in recent years.

It is hardly surprising to note that she and Starr are big rivals while fitness expert Harvey Walden IV just hates everyone.

Sadly these particularly pumped up C-list celebs are going to wear even thinner when I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here launches next week on ITV1.

Perhaps they should have opted for the £100,000 from Oz with the Bush Tucker Trials, jungle heat and rice diet to ensure a slim survival in the spotlight.

Child Of Our Time, which concluded a three-part run with The Making Of Me, is also fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

While you smile good-naturedly over the normal antics of the three-year-olds taking part in Professor Winston's study, the focus falls far harder on the parents involved.

You end up analysing them on parenting skills and note that an opera singer and a successful company director are going to make a far better job of bringing up baby than a single mother relying on a grumpy Italian au pair.

As the rewind button finally found The Great British Driving Test, which suffered from terminal "for God's sake get on with it!" syndrome, I just about sneaked a pass mark of 30 out of 35 as the men narrowly triumphed 41- 40 in percentage terms over the women.

What was the point? The driving being tested was all in theory and what really matters is what happens out on the road where many women can't reverse park and most men are guilty of speeding.

However, I am fed up of hearing that women must be better drivers because they can multi-task. Doing several jobs badly at the same time is not necessarily an advantage.

Published: 24/01/2004