Churchill's Girl (C4); Coast (BBC2): PAMELA Digby did her bit for the war effort working at the foreign office where - and this is what made the job so attractive - she was "surrounded by eye-catching men in uniform".

The woman who was US Ambassador to France when she died in 1997 was variously described as a good time girl, courtesan and a congenial young woman as the Churchill's Girl documentary unfolded. The narrator was being polite. She was a woman who was attracted to men with money and power like a moth to a flame. Hers is a fascinating, if not exactly well-known story.

Her first husband was man about town Randolph Churchill. It was not a love match but a piece of business. She was the fifth young lady to whom he proposed in the month since the Second World War had broken out - and the first to accept.

While Randolph was out womanising, drinking and gambling, she was pressed into active service by her father-in-law Winston Churchill. Her mission was to woo the Americans into helping the Brits.

This gave fresh meaning to the term "special relationship" when she took up with President Roosevelt's envoy Averrell Harriman. He was married but they were thrown together, literally it would appear, at the Dorchester hotel during an air raid.

Their political pillow talk gave Winston Churchill access to the most powerful American in this country. She entertained other high-ranking Yanks too.

Later, she began a passionate affair with US broadcaster Ed Murrow. Just one slight problem - he was married. When, after ten childless years his wife became pregnant, he dumped Pamela. With her marriage to Churchill over and the other Churchill out of office, she moved to Paris where "a woman of Pamela's sort" was at home in the city of love.

She became known as Europe's most enticing kept woman, although it was Pamela who was doing the manipulating, not the men.

The handsome Italian heir to the Fiat motor car fortune and a Hollywood producer were among her other conquests before she met up again with old wartime flame Harriman, by that time older (79), richer $200m and, most importantly, recently widowed.

Politically, she found a cause helping promote an up-and-coming US politician named Bill Clinton by introducing him to the right people and ensuring the campaign coffers were full. It was Clinton who appointed her US ambassador to France and who ordered a state funeral when she died.

An hour hardly seemed long enough for such a eventful life. For once, a programme left you wanting more. A movie about Pamela Churchill Harriman can't be far behind.

The latest episode of Coast travelled from Newcastle to Hull and seemed to take an age to do it. The aerial photography of the coastline was as spectacular as ever but it needs more than pretty pictures to keep me interested. I'm afraid learning the details of a new way of plotting even the most unstable landscape is no match for a Bushtucker Trial.