Blown out

I doubt if former EastEnders star Gillian Taylforth will be watching C4 at 10.30 this evening. She won't want to be reminded of "the lewd act of Trotters Bottom" as the documentary Sex On Trial recalls what it describes, with some justification, as the most bizarre trial in British legal history.

The star was Taylforth, who denied performing a lewd act on her boyfriend in a car in a lay-by off the A1 near Trotters Bottom. She said he'd drunk five bottles of champagne and she was massaging his sore stomach.

This gave the British Press an excuse not to point out the dangers of drinking too much but to discuss oral sex in public and attempt to put an end to the run of expensive libel cases in which celebrities had taken newspapers to the cleaners.

The 1994 trial gave lawyers the chance to demonstrate just how far they'll go to see justice is done - the car park behind the High Court for a reconstruction of the lewd act.

Taylforth and boyfriend Geoff Knights climbed into the front seats of the Range Rover to demonstrate that the driver couldn't give oral sex to someone in the passenger seat (at least, not without contravening the Highway Code).

The prosecution recruited two bystanders - ironically, tabloid journalists - to show that such an act was possible. "Of course, the jury must realise that this reconstruction is not quite right. It's missing a vital component, an erect penis," barrister George Carmen, the top cross examiner of his day, pointed out.

You really couldn't make this up, especially the last minute admission of a home movie showing Taylforth at a barbecue sucking a bottle, fondling a sausage and declaring "I give good head". She was not, I submit m'lud, referring to her hairdressing skills.

Taylforth herself provided a dramatic conclusion to the case, collapsing after the jury found for The Sun newspaper and left her facing a £500,000 legal bill.

She exited the court on a stretcher. How ironic that circumstances led her to write a column for The Sun for free to help pay off her debts.

By offering what you might call a blow-by-blow account of the whole hilarious court case, the programme shows how the relationship between the Press and celebrities changed as the warning went out that suing newspapers wasn't an easy way to collect large amounts of tax-free money.

A lewd act similar to the one at the centre of the trial is performed towards the end of the first part of Life Line on our troubled hero Peter Brisco (Ray Stevenson, fresh from the gladiator's arena as Titus Pullo in the BBC's Rome series).

He can't just lie back and think of England (country or football team, take your pick) because he has a lot on his mind.

Old flame Katy (Joanne Whalley) has been knocked down and killed by a car shortly after they rekindled their romance. Now he's communicating with her through a phone chatline for the bereaved, whose services apparently include a direct line to beyond the grave.

Stephen Gallagher's supernatural drama was presumably rejected by The ITV Department For Two-Part Psychological Thrillers on the grounds that it wasn't good enough. This really is dreary stuff in which Peter replies to his brother's contention that: "She's gone and that's it" with a haunted comment of: "I know she's dead, she's just not dead to me".

He'll have to be careful what he says to the voice on the other end of the Life Line phone because the service's rules state that "profanity, abuse and the exchange of personal details is not permitted".

That doesn't leave a lot to talk about, although Peter's confident there won't be an awkward silence because "if love's strong enough, there's no force on earth to stop it happening".

You may not be able to stop it happening but just be careful not to do it in a lay-by near Trotters Bottom when a policeman's looking.