Footballers' Wives (ITV1): THERE was a truly shocking moment in the opening episode of the third series of the ultimate trash TV show.

It looked - and I don't know how to break this news - as if someone might actually kick a ball.

Two men were seen standing on a football pitch. Tension mounted. Would they get their kit on and put boot to ball? This, as any true follower of the exploits of Earls Park knows, is contrary to all the rules of Footballers' Wives.

Post-match scenes in the shower room are perfectly acceptable, with naked male bottoms as obligatory as Tanya's plunging necklines which make Jordan look like a convent girl.

Happily, this glimpse of the beautiful game was mercifully brief. We don't watch Footballers' Wives for the soccer, although who could deny that the series is a load of balls? That's what we love about it - the bad dialogue, the bad acting, the bad hairstyles.

The episode opened with Tanya giving a brief rundown of the story so far, before declaring, "Can't sit around gossiping all day, I've got a funeral to go to". Poor Chardonnay had succumbed to 'the ravages of anorexia' six months after helping Jason fall to his death. He was superfluous to requirements, having bedded every available female who came within spitting distance of him.

The writers aren't making the same mistake with new signing Conrad Gates and his Bollywood B-movie actress wife Amber. Conrad swings both ways, which we had plenty of opportunity to see as he paraded naked through the foyer of a Thailand hotel. Clearly bend it like Gates means something entirely different to bend it like Beckham (although, for legal reason, everyone is at pains to point out he's nothing like Beckham).

Tanya, the only surviving wife of the original trio, seems to be on an economy drive, wearing the same dress for her wedding to club owner Frank as she did for Chardonnay's funeral.

Not that she gets much wear out of her clothes as she discards them with monotonous regularity for sex with anyone but new husband Frank, although even she believes two's company, three's a crowd. She and Conrad were replaying a scene from a cheap 70s soft porn film when wife Amber re-appeared to suggest a threesome (and she didn't mean a game of snap).

"We love each other enough to have fun with other people," she explained. As we'd seen her brandishing a strap-on dildo before the end of part one, we'd already been alerted that her sexual tastes are post-watershed.

What, I hear you ask, of Jackie Pascoe, star player Kyle's mum who got pregnant by Jason on the snooker table and passed off the baby as her grandchild? She's wasted no time getting to know Earls Park's new manager.

Kyle was unhappy with this turn of events, demanding to know if his mother is sleeping with Roger. "We are dating. This is a mature and happy relationship," she replied.

And my name is David Beckham

Published: 12/02/2004