THE feeling that a friend in need is a pest was difficult to shrug off while watching The Conman, His Lover and the Prime Minister's Wife (BBC1, Thursday).

A BBC producer with the unfortunate name of Lynne Alleway - a surname one letter away from the place where the News of the World was waiting with £150,000 in used notes - jumped at the chance to film how Peter Foster and his girlfriend Carole Caplin coped with the Cheriegate affair.

Thanks to a friendship between Alleway and Caplin, the lifestyle guru to Cherie Blair agreed to allow the BBC to record the media frenzy over three times jailed Foster helping Mrs Blair to buy two flats in Bristol. The invitation didn't extend to revealing the content of phone conversations between Caplin and Mrs Blair and we were left with a tantalising few seconds of film containing Tony Blair's voice on Caplin's answering service.

"This woman talks in complete riddles," said my wife as Caplin waffled on about Foster "having to do what he has to do". As we didn't know what Foster had to do or how he was going to do it, I'm not exactly sure who was conning who during the making of this fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Strangely, it's showing comes at a time when Mr B is trying to reassure the nation that we can trust his judgement over the build-up of our armed forces on the borders of Iraq.

I had intended to watch The Brit Awards 2003 (ITV, Thursday) but my wife said "you can turn that rubbish off for a start" when host Davina McCall had a rude reference to Pink almost wearing a pair of trousers bleeped out.

Justin Timberlake's antics with Kylie Minogue also turned out to be more important than Coldplay's Chris Martin - winning highly-deserved Best Band and Best Album titles - saying "We are all going to die when George Bush gets his way, but it's great to go out with a bang."

Maybe we should get the newly-bearded Tom Jones to go out and sing to Saddam and calm things down a little. The BBC has certainly got its knickers in a twist over highlighting the dangers of life today.

In addition to the high-profile Hitting Home programmes about abusive relationships Wednesday night also brought us UK's Worst... Pet Shop? and The Food Police.

Neither shows were quite as teeth-clenching as watching young Adam having his bones pinned and broken in a leg-stretching operation shown earlier during Children's Hospital (BBC1), but both aimed to turn our stomachs.

In UK's Worst Nick Knowles led us into a world where you can still buy lions, tigers and bears, oh my etc. Britain's lack of legislation to control dodgy pet shops seemed amazing at a time when the rest of the country is worrying about EC regulation as a banana skin to freedom of choice.

Apparently not, The Food Police in the Midlands investigated a firm which was illegally cutting up stinking reject poultry and selling it to restaurants and supermarkets for human consumption.

Somehow I can't see anyone offering £150,000 for exclusive rights to such a story, but which is more reader friendly?

Published: 22/02/2003