Sleeping With Teacher (C4)

Zero Hour: Massacre At Columbine High (five)

AND what was the sex like?," the interviewer demanded of Lucy, a teacher who'd bedded a 15-year-old schoolboy.

She wasn't giving away her intimate secrets, although did reveal that "we just used to have a laugh together, do crazy things like eat pancakes in the bath".

Mother-of-three Lucy isn't laughing much now after serving time in prison for "assaulting a minor". Because Gary was under age, she's branded a child molester and is on the sex offenders' register.

Sleeping With Teacher also introduced us to John, a 43-year-old music teacher seen as an older man pursuing a Lolita fantasy when he took up with a 16-year-old girl in the school choir.

The couple, who've been together a year and are expecting their first child, see the situation differently. According to them, they fell in love. "It felt right," said John, who'd committed a potentially criminal act (although eventually the charges were dropped).

John had a relaxed relationship with his pupils. Too relaxed in the case of Claire, some might suggest. But the programme, for all its salacious tabloid mutterings, raised important points about the role of teachers, both male and female.

In some ways, they're substitute parents and sometimes cross the line. Rachel was silly enough to go on a date with her married and "very nice to look at" PE teacher. He should've been a maths teacher as he was careful to wait until two days after her 16th birthday before asking her out.

It ended with a car chase in which the teacher eluded her pursuing father and had sex with her in a lay-by after a few glasses of bubbly. "No romance - just wham, bam, thank you ma'am," as she recalled.

She was as ill-advised as Lucy who, emerging from an abusive relationship, invited boys round to help decorate her house. Gary flirted and kissed her. She jokingly said she'd leave the door open for him. Next thing she knew he'd returned and was getting undressed at the end of the bed.

Yet she didn't call a halt, having sex with him regularly over the next few months. She contended that what she did in her personal life had no bearing on her job as a teacher, an opinion with which it was difficult to agree when she added that if she wanted to be a prostitute in her private life, it was no-one else's business.

New series Zero Hour, which presents minute-by-minute accounts of terrible tragedies, also took us back to school with a chilling dramatisation of the Columbine High School Massacre in 1999. This left 12 students and one teacher dead, and countless others wounded.

Hearing students recount the hour during which two gun-toting students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a killing spree inside the school made horrific listening.

The not-very-comforting conclusion was that there was no single cause for the massacre but that a combination of omissions and oversights by police, parents, doctors and the school were to blame.

Antony and the Johnsons, York Grand Opera House

SINCE they were announced as this year's winner of the Mercury Music Prize, Antony and the Johnsons, regarded by many as "eccentric" or "avant garde" have become a hot ticket. This gig in York was proof: it was sold out weeks in advance, with punters travelling from as far away as London and Manchester to see the band play. The band, comprising young New Yorkers, is led by Antony Hegarty, a shambling figure who resembles a cross between Les Dawson and Elijah Wood's portrayal of Frodo Baggins in The Lord Of The Rings. But appearances can be deceptive, and Hegarty's voice is like that of an angel.

At York's Grand Opera House, Hegarty led a group of six superb backing musicians, playing mainly acoustic instruments, through his highly distinctive songs. For the most part, they came across as left-field ballads into which he appeared to pour his very soul. The lyrics tell of somebody who has loved, lost, and loved again, and are etched with pain, regret, and delicate joy as Hegarty describes his transgender concerns (For Today I Am A Boy), and mixes eroticism with tenderness.

Upstaged by a disobedient piano stool that was replaced numerous times, Hegarty was a relaxed but quiet performer. When the band raised the tempo and decibel level for the superb Fist, the resulting cheers were sincere. As the audience left, one said : "There weren't any egos on stage tonight". He was right, and this excellent gig felt better for it.

Miles Salter