The Farm (five); Celebrity Love Island (ITV1)

THERE are some things you never expect to hear on TV and this is one of them: "Emma Noble is next to stimulate the stag while Lionel Blair sucks out the semen".

Life on celebrity reality show The Farm was working hard to outdo the Rebecca Loos pleasuring a pig scenario from the last series. And what better to use than the latest TV personalities, turkeys - fresh from their star turns as Turkey Twizzlers on Jamie's School Dinners.

The celebrities were required to inseminate the farm's eight female turkey hens. Expert Paul explained it was a matter of stimulating, sucking and then blowing (the semen into the female through a straw).

The Farm is, to be honest, a pile of steaming manure. When you're rooting for Orville the duck to win, you know something is amiss. The green creature is showing the most sense. Callling fellow inmate Flava, or whatever his silly name is, "a tosspot" showed rare insight.

In case you thought the programme couldn't sink any lower, later we were treated to American porn veteran Ron Jeremy taking matters into his own hand under the bed sheets.

ITV1 is hoping for rather more dual action in Celebrity Love Island, another waste of TV space that will be occupying our screens for the next five weeks. I feel like booking myself a holiday on a remote island to escape, just as long as it's not the one occupied by the ten celebrities in the TV show.

The idea is to put "five babes in bikinis and six hunks in trunks" on a beautiful tropical island and hope these singletons pair off. Viewers are encouraged to vote to send two of them - one of each sex - to spend 48 hours together in the love shack.

The theory is that it worked ratings-wise when Jordan and Peter Andre hooked up on I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here, so this should be five times more interesting.

The programme promises to be all tease as the makers have said they won't show any X-certificate stuff. They're content to build up our hopes and then fail to show us the pay off.

Unlike I'm A Celebrity, these island dropouts appear to be required to do little but sit around in the sun, swim in the pool and chatter to each other. Not a Bushtucker Trial in sight. I fear that spending several hours a night watching people sunbathing will be as stimulating as watching paint dry, or watching a turkey get tickled by Emma Noble.

ITV bosses will be crossing their fingers that Celebrity Love Island doesn't go the same way as Celebrity Wrestling. The ratings of that Saturday night show were so poor that it's been pulled from the schedules.

We can only hope that ITV pulls the plug on Celebrity Love Island and leaves the celebrities stranded there. It'll be ten fewer contestants for whatever celebrity reality show is dreamed up next.

Published: ??/??/2004