IT wasn't a gentlemanly case of pistols at dawn when two of the big-screen's biggest stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, clashed over a woman.

They didn't even start slugging it out over great Dane Brigitte Nielsen but used other means to get back at each other.

Nielsen and Schwarzenegger met on the set of the film Red Sonja. "Arnold and myself got very close. We had the best time ever," she confided. That didn't stop him marrying someone else and Nielsen getting wed to Stallone. Their rivalry extended to the screen where Rambo and Terminator vied to be number one. Hollywood wasn't big enough for both of them. The spat turned nasty. Someone let slip to Schwarzenegger's unofficial biographer Wendy Leigh that his father had belonged to the Nazi party. When the Austrian former Mr Universe took legal action, Stallone funded Leigh's court case.

Eventually the two screen giants kissed (only metaphorically, of course) and made up long enough to help launch Planet Hollywood. As usual in Tinseltown, commerce was put above everything else.

When Muscles Ruled The World gave us a thorough workout of the history of muscle men and women from Popeye to celebrity keep-fit programmes from the likes of Jane Fonda, Cher and Angela Lansbury.

Not everyone was nice about men who were "big, burly and anything but beautiful". More himbo than hero, someone suggested. Germaine Greer worried that the use of steroids led to shrivelled testicles - "all that beef and no potato".

Most satisfyingly, someone dared to ask the question we all wanted answered: why did the Incredible Hulk's trousers never split around the groin area? He always retained his modesty in this ripping yarn but, as Jeremy Clarkson pointed out, "his clothes bill must have been huge."

There was a reminder of Tony Holland, the man who flexed his muscles in time to music on Opportunity Knocks, and The World's Strongest Man competition. "Not what you'd call athletes, they were just brutes," said Cold Feet's John Thomson. I bet he wouldn't say that to these faces.