Memories, everybody needs good memories...

AS A TV critic you need to keep your head when all around are losing theirs. This was brought home as I settled down to watch a preview tape of C5's new series Ancient Murder Mystery. The episode was called Headless Warriors. At least, that's what it said on the label.

What came on screen told a different story. This wasn't about people who'd lost their heads, this was about heads themselves. Funny shaped ones, as the title indicated - The Riddle of the Cone-Shaped Skulls.

An episode of a little-known programme called The Riddle of the Wrong Preview Tape was enacted in the aftermath of this revelation. All the stuff about the art of head-shaping was very interesting but not much use for a column called Last Night's TV - as it wasn't on last night.

Neighbours was shown as usual, although I suspected someone was playing a joke when the director's name was listed as Ali Ali. The madness continued with school teacher Susan Kennedy running around in her pyjamas telling husband Dr Karl to "stay away from me".

Another domestic in Erinsborough, you thought. Then it slowly dawned that Susan had lost her head, or her senses, or both. Karl's medical expertise let him down. "All I know is we have to get your mother to hospital," he said, which seemed a vague diagnosis even for a soap doctor. "This is bad isn't it?," said daughter Libby, who knows a desperate storyline when she sees one - although not quite, as has been suggested, in the same loony league as Fallon's abduction by aliens in The Colbys or Ivy haunting Coronation Street.

Matters don't improve much in Erinsborough Hospital. Susan thinks Libby is Carmel and is worried that her parents haven't rushed to her side. Dr Karl pulls himself together long enough to venture a suggestion as to what's wrong with Susan. "I think it's from when she hit her head," he says. Give the man a prize. "This is really scary," says Libby, referring to her mother's forgetfulness rather than her father's appalling medical knowledge.

You have to admit, he might be right. His colleague gets more technical, calling it retrograde amnesia. I forget the precise details but remember someone saying that it's probably only a temporary thing. Sending Harold Bishop in to see Susan fails to jog her memory, although she doesn't run screaming from the room as women usually do when Harold approaches them.

Enter Dr Karl, in a white coat so as not to frighten Susan, to learn the horrible truth. His wife thinks she's Susan Smith, the year is 1972 and she celebrated her 16th birthday the day before. How on earth are they going to convince her otherwise?

I have a suggestion. Make her look at herself in the mirror - once she sees the oldest 16-year-old on the planet, she'll come to her senses.