Sexology: Armed Robbery Orgasm (C4)

Real Life: My Death Row Lover (ITV1)

RON Keyes found it as hard as anyone to believe what he'd done. Reading the book written about his exploits, he declared: "You mean to tell me I actually did this stuff?"

The first of the week's Sexology presentations was described as a bizarre love story - "it's like Bonnie and Clyde but with kinky sex". That's a pretty good come-on for any viewer and the programme didn't disappoint, not just in its reconstructions of Ron and his partner Debbie's bedroom antics but in the way the story developed.

He claimed in his book that he only participated in a crime spree with Debbie Myers in the US in the mid-1980s because it turned her on. Armed robbery was the foreplay to their bedroom romps in which Ron liked to be dominated, a state he first enjoyed when his mother spanked him for being naughty.

"People said Debbie was dangerous. That excited me. I've always liked bad girls," he said.

Ron spent hundreds of dollars a night on girls who dominated him. In Debbie, he found the perfect match. And what's more he put everything down in his diary. The entry for Thursday, May 10 read: "Warm but cloudy. Debbie $100. Stimulated myself to orgasm twice. As a coping mechanism I find masturbation a significant pleasure. Reminder, take empties to bottle bank". It's hardly Samuel Pepys but conveys the odd nature of their sexual relationship.

The film followed a predictable path until the film-makers found Debbie - who, like Ron, had served time in prison for robbery - and asked her for her side of the story.

At this point, the narrative took a very different turn. She rejected Ron's claims with the comment: "He was 41, he was balding, there was nothing to get turned on by". She was a lesbian, with a partner of 17 years, who believed in the paranormal and wrote poems.

Debbie maintained that she'd reported their crimes to the police, but that Ron's diary detailing their robberies and sex life had been used against her. She suggested he'd made it all up about armed robbery being their foreplay. The film then took another unexpected twist as Ron was found dead, meaning the truth died with him.

More tales of love and murder in My Death Row Lover, about the British women who find love behind bars. They're on the outside, while their lovers - although some couples have never even touched - are in prison, awaiting death.

You can understand a prisoner latching on to someone on the outside more easily than the other way round. What do these women hope to get from such relationships? Despite interviews with both Death Row inmates and their women, I'm not sure I was any the wiser by the end.

Some cling to the belief that their man is innocent and campaign to get them pardoned. "We're never going to be together but the feelings don't stop," said Jo, engaged to a Death Row prisoner for eight years.