The man who's married to the Black Cats

THEODORE is a successful restaurant manager whose life has been taken over by gambling. He admits he'd be in the casino 24 hours a day, seven days a week if he could.

Jennifer wants to become the perfect woman and takes three hours to do her make-up each day. Her ideal is difficult to attain because, when she looks in the mirror, she believes she's terribly disfigured.

Rosemary is a shopaholic whose haul includes 30 cars, more than 600 Barbie dolls and several pianos. She embezzled £4m to feed her habit.

Edwin is a computer analyst with two obsessions, high heels and masturbation. Whether he indulges in both at the same time, we didn't learn.

Cat beats them all. The name is a bit of a giveaway - he wants, and I kid you not, to transform himself into a big cat. "It's something I'm compelled to do," he says.

The most horrifying thing is that he's managing to find people who are willing to help him in his bizarre quest. So far he's had his nose flattened, his ears pointed, his lip cut, and his septum relocated. Coupled with full facial tattoos, these adjustments give him a more feline look.

The programme followed him as he had more whiskers implanted in his lip to ensure he really does look the cat's whiskers.

There was something obscene about all this. Surely someone could have pointed him in the direction of a psychiatrist before they started literally chopping and changing his features.

It was a relief when the cameras turned to Gary Sunderland AFC Lamb. No prizes for guessing which North-East football team he supports. He hasn't missed a match in 27 years. His home is decorated in their colours. Everything he owns, including the toilet seat, bears Sunderland's crest.

He has given orders that when he dies, the funeral procession is to stop for a minute's silence outside the Stadium of Light.

Before that, he's getting married and has invited the whole team to attend his big day. There are doubts that his wedding to fiancee Jackie will go ahead. The unimaginable has happened - a vital Sunderland match may be moved. If that happens, Gary says without hesitation "we would have no option but to cancel because we'd have no guests". Or bridegroom, either.

Jackie seems remarkably sanguine about this possible cancellation of her big match, and, as it turns out, she needn't have worried because the date of the game wasn't switched so the wedding goes ahead as planned.

Gary can trace his obsession for Sunderland back to watching his first match at the age of ten. That was enough to get him hooked, although some would say there's only a thin line between loyalty and madness - a line that the man who's becoming a cat appears to have crossed.