Tabloid Tales (BBC1); Ampleforth - My Teacher's A Monk (ITV1); A happy celebrity! This is sickening," Mirror editor Piers Morgan commented on hearing from Victoria Beckham about her lovely life.

"Oh, piss off!," joshed Posh.

I'd have told Morgan to get lost much earlier. If you're going to make a series about how newspapers treat celebrities, a more impartial investigator than the editor of a national tabloid might seem a necessity. He seemed to be doing his pieces on camera in his office in between his usual duties. At one point, he even put down the phone so he could talk to us.

Posh herself was interviewed, further proof that she and the tabloids use and abuse each other. There was even the suggestion that tip-offs leading to "informal photographs" being snapped of the family out shopping or whatever, come from within the Beckham camp.

Tabloid Tales was a suitably tatty rehash of Mrs Beckham's relationship with the press from her Posh Spice days. Morgan wondered if she was "a canny little minx manipulating the press or they are preying on her". A bit of both, I reckon. The best comment came from someone talking about her solo singing career who admitted that "she does come in for a hard time as a singer" - and added, "but that's because she can't sing".

Much more eye-opening than this tabloid tittle-tattle was Ampleforth - My Teacher's A Monk, a tabloidy title for a splendid documentary in which the Benedictine monks at the Yorkshire school allowed in cameras for the first time. My only regret was this was a one-off programme and not a series. You were left feeling there was much more to see and hear about life there.

The teachers may be monks, but the problems faced are those confronting any teacher anywhere. School dress code, we heard, "has been something of a battlefield". Then there was the matter of how much breast could be exposed by pin-up posters on bedroom walls. A pupil and a monk debated whether smoking on the roof counted as smoking inside (£25 fine) or outside (£10 fine).

Hearing Father Cuthbert talking about oral sex and sexually transmitted diseases in the classroom was a surprise (but it was a lesson about sex, so understandable). So was discovering that pupils are allowed to go down the village pub on a Saturday afternoon, on the understanding they have only two pints or three glasses of wine with their meal, and as long as they're back by 2.30 for the rugby match.

The monks eat in silence and pray together five times a day, but they're not all the same sort of housemaster.

Father James likes a fag and loud music. Headmaster Father Leo gave permission for an end-of-term concert by in-house pop band The Trevs. His only worry was with music "that has a preoccupation with Satanism - that's not a good thing".

Former Ampleforth pupil Father William takes a tough stance with pupils in his house, earning the nickname of Evil Billy. "Does that annoy you?," he was asked by the programme-makers. "Yes, a little bit," said an obviously-hurt Father William.

The school now takes in girl boarders, and keeping them apart from the boys isn't always successful. Cameras caught Giles and Charlotte, who've been going out for a year, sneaking off to a hut in the woods. This certainly wasn't what you expected at the school that was the inspiration for Hogwart's in the Harry Potter books.

Published: 30/04/2003