Ken Dodd In The Dock (C4)

Teenage Kicks (C4)

A JOKE from Ken Dodd's act: "What a great day for throwing a stone through the window of the tax office and saying, 'get some blood out of that'." But the Liverpool funny man wasn't laughing when, in 1989, he was charged with 11 counts of fiddling the tax man. Not so much king of the diddy men as king of the diddling men.

The Liverpool Crown Court case that followed was, in the opinion of the documentary Ken Dodd In The Dock, a greater performance than anything seen at Liverpool Empire. Dodd was cleared, at the expense of exposing his personal life in the kind of detail he'd always been careful to avoid.

The case opened with his barrister, George Carman, telling the judge his client had a heart condition and couldn't stand trial. After a two week adjournment was announced, Dodd sprinted away and leapt over a flower bed outside the court to avoid waiting journalists - not, you might think, suitable behaviour for a man with a serious heart condition.

Two weeks later, he was back in the dock after medical tests showed him fit enough to stand trial. The court heard how Dodd kept cash in shoe boxes at his home because of a dislike of banks. He made cash-and-carry flights to Jersey and the Isle of Man, carrying suitcases stuffed with money. In all, he had £700,000 in 20 offshore deposits - despite his distrust of banks.

Carman was an expert at eliciting public sympathy for his client. Their double act when the comedian took the witness box was superb. Less amusing for Dodd was recalling the death of his first fiancee after a 25-year relationship, and the fertility treatment undertaken by his next partner. All this anxiety, the defence alleged, contributed to the emotional state that caused him to neglect to pay tax.

After five weeks of laughter and tears in the courtroom, Dodd walked away a free man. The price this most secretive of stars paid - apart from back taxes - was having the "bizarre, intimate details" of his private life revealed.

Teenagers in The Joy Of Teen Sex, the first in the Teenage Kicks series, had no hesitation recounting their sexual exploits. How much they were telling the truth about the number of partners they've had, I'm not sure.

Lads who use chat-up lines like "Fancy an orgasm or something?" aren't to be trusted. What did emerge was their stupidity. Many said, boasted even, that they had unprotected sex regularly. Their ignorance of STDs - sexually transmitted diseases - was woeful. One girl said it was up to the boy to use a condom, no doubt explaining why she was pregnant and suffering from a STD that could make her baby blind. There was also something distasteful about the will they? won't they? element running through the film as 14-year-olds Jess and Jules debated on camera whether to lose their virginity with each other on the first anniversary of going out together.