On TV

This World: Living Positive (BBC2)

STEVEN Bailey's shopping list as he visited his local K-Mart store was bizarre. He bought a shirt for his nephew for Christmas and socks for himself and, oh yes, there was the duct tape and big plastic tarpaulin to wrap up the decomposing, naked man in his apartment. How many others in his situation would have had the nerve to combine the purchase of tools for disposing of a dead body with Christmas shopping?

Like other men whose lovers died, Bailey panicked when something designed to give extra pleasure led to death by sex. The documentary explored the practice of restricting the supply of oxygen or blood to the body in a bid to experience a more explosive orgasm. Many of those who use breath control-play or erotic strangulation don't realise how dangerous it is. Hundreds die every year, with one contributor feeling it was as risky as playing Russian roulette. Bailey was The True Master, a gay super-dominator who advertised on the web and attracted clients from across the globe to his home in America. A three-day session with Californian Frank ended tragically because Bailey was having phone sex in another room and forgot that Frank was trussed up and drugged. He was sentenced to four years for second degree manslaughter.

Joey found himself with a dead wife after their third wedding anniversary celebration - beer, pizza and erotic strangulation - left her dead on the bed. Fortunately, his home movie collection showed that they used these practices in their love-making on a regular basis. He got away with five years probation. "We thought it was safe," he maintained. Clearly it's not because it's difficult to tell if the person being strangled is merely suffering from lack of oxygen to the brain or cardiac arrest.

We met Lew and Sue at an S&M barbecue in the woods where afters involved two scantily-clad women being tied up and dangled from a tree, giving a whole new meaning to the term well-hung.

She's confident about giving Lew "control over the very breath I take". Besides, she adds: "If I die that way I'm going to die happy. Doesn't everyone want to die during sex or orgasm?". Answers on a postcard please.

The World Aids Day film Living Positive offered an insight into the lives of six HIV sufferers around the world. They have contrasting outlooks. Shawn, now 30 and diagnosed with HIV when he was 11, is happily married. Cynthia promotes safe sex in Botswana as winner of the Miss HIV Stigma Free competition. Transvestite Hanah in Brazil isn't so happy, trying to hire a hit man to kill her. Their stories provided the human side. Captions stating the statistics showed the reality - facts such as one person every minute is infected with HIV in India and 37 per cent of the population have HIV in Botswana, where the average life expectancy is 35.

Compared to those figures, a few people dying through kinky sex seems relatively unimportant.

The Comedy of Errors, Newcastle Theatre Royal

THE RSC has saved the best for last in presenting Shakespeare's comedies in this Newcastle season. The Comedy of Errors is performed with such obvious relish and such a sense of fun that everyone leaving the theatre after the event was grinning from ear to ear. If you thought Shakespearean actors spent their time in ponderous soliloquy, striding po-faced and dignified across the stage, witness this production, directed by Nancy Meckler. The bread buns fly, people get whacked round the head with a silver salver, pratfalls abound and our twin heroes' final exit is reminiscent of Morecambe and Wise.

The principal characters are two sets of twins, which gives ample scope for mistaken identity and misunderstandings. The company is fortunate in that the 'twins' really do resemble one another, and sometimes the audience is as confused as the characters. I could praise each individual's performance but suffice to say that everyone in the company excelled, principals and other parts alike. There are perfect little moments going on in the background; the reaction of the owner of a chicken when someone cuts off the bird's head; the little dance steps performed by Adriana's servants as they bring in the dining table; the on-stage musicians nodding off at intervals. I'd love to see it again tonight, and every other night this week. It's bliss!

* Runs until Saturday. Box office: 0870 905 5060.

Sue Heath

Horror For Wimps, York Theatre Royal

YOU know what you're going to get from Maggie Fox and Sue Ryding, the funny women collectively known as Lip Service. Plays such as Withering Looks, Very Little Women and Women On The Verger have shown a knack for absurd, silly comedy taking the mickey out of what the pair call "popular culture" in the programme. You can spot the inspiration for Horror For Wimps from the references to virtually every horror movie under the sun, from Frankenstein to The Exorcist. The production also makes use of film and DVD to present a film within the play as the action follows Keith and Jeanette's attempt to have a quiet night in front of the telly. They are sucked into a horror movie - well, various horror movies - and as usual have to play all the parts themselves (men, women, monsters) which involves the usual quick changes, sex changes and dodgy wig changes. The constant switching from one location to another slows down the action, while Mark Chatterton's direction seems a bit ponderous at times. I didn't feel Fox and Ryding, writers as well as performers, had quite got it together. Some of the comedy seemed awkward and forced.

There weren't as many of the "pant-wettingly funny" (The Guardian about Very Little Women) moments that we expect from Lip Service. This was more rib-tickling than laugh-out-loud comedy.

* Runs until Saturday. Box office: (01904) 623568.

Steve Pratt