Who Am I? - Storyville (BBC Four)

Boss Swap (C4)

THE woman looked anxious as she crossed the busy London road. "That's the first time I've come across here since the accident. I won't be doing it again. I only did it for you," she told the cameras.

Her reaction was understandable. Four years ago, arts and current affairs broadcaster Sheena McDonald was hit by a police van as she crossed and suffered serious head injuries.

She lay in a coma for several weeks. Doctors were uncertain how much, or even if, she'd recover. When she regained consciousness, she had no memory of who she was.

Gradually, memories returned and she's now back at the microphone presenting Radio 4 news programmes. But her loss of identity clearly still worries her, especially as people keep telling her that she's a changed person. Like The Prisoner's insistence that "I am a person, not a number", McDonald has to keep saying, "I'm a lot better, I am me".

Who Am I? was an attempt to prove that. She relived the night of the accident, then spoke to doctors who'd treated her, friends, relatives and her partner, broadcaster Allan Little, who played a key role in her recovery. This was an honest, fascinating journey of discovery.

As Little said of McDonald in her post-coma state: "She was definitely in there - it was a question of finding her." She felt like a foreigner in her own body. Interestingly, the intellectual Sheena - the public one, you might say - returned before the emotional Sheena that people saw in private.

She's still assertive enough to disagree with some medical opinion. One doctor declared it was inevitable that a person would change, emerging from a severe injury. McDonald defied doctors with the extent of her recovery. They expected her to be able to look after herself and do some sort of work, but not gain her full intellect or return to live broadcasting.

While she maintained, "I am me", Little recognised they could never go back to the way they were before. For one thing, they're much more dependent on each other. He thinks of it as their recovery not hers. "It was something we did together," he said.

Change isn't always a good thing, as Boss Swap demonstrated. London-based self-made millionaire estate agent Bruce Birkitt switched places with Mike Porritt, managing director of a chain of cut-price car dealers in the North-East.

It was difficult to know who was more objectionable. Both men rubbed the others' staff up the wrong way. Porritt sacked the estate agent's wife, who worked in the property business, and walked out three days before the experiment was due to end. Porritt's staff sacked Birkitt after sales and relations with them went downhill.

All this made great TV, providing the type of explosive confrontation at which Swap programmes excel - and showed how not to run a business.

Published: ??/??/2003