Nip/Tuck (C4)

The Springer Show (ITV1)

THE phrase "physician heal thyself" springs to mind when watching Nip/Tuck, the US drama series about cosmetic surgeons with overactive social lives. The second series has upped the sex and surgery quota with more spurting blood and bare bums than you'd find if Dracula attacked a nudist camp.

One surgeon, Sean, is having muscle spasms. This is not recommended for a doctor about to operate on a patient with a large boil on the side of his neck.

His work partner Christian is also having spasms, but in the bedroom where his female companion asks that he pays her more attention, a request he dismisses with the words "first come, first served".

He comes to regret not being a more caring lover after she sneezes during sex and leaves him with a broken nose. At least he didn't break anything else.

Despite the shakes, Sean is determined to operate as normal. If I was Calvin with his extra nipple, I wouldn't let him get within a mile of me with a plastic spoon, let alone a sharp metal scalpel.

Christian has much the same opinion. He and Sean argue over the operating table as their triple nipple patient awaits surgery. "Is this going to be pistols at 20 paces or is someone going to get to work?," asks the anaesthetist.

"Give me the scapel, Sean," orders Christian, like a policeman trying to disarm a man with a gun.

No wonder Christian decides to operate on his own nose in an almost unwatchable scene in which he pokes a succession of sharp objects up his nostril. I looked away when he produced the hammer with which to bash his nose.

Why bother with real medical men when The Springer Show will solve your problems for you. Yesterday various people subjected themselves to lie detector tests. "Did I marry a cheat?" asked Kathleen.

Husband Michael had been asked three questions while attached to a lie detector and presenter Jerry Springer had the results. Everyone seemed to have total confidence in this piece of electronic equipment. If the machine said that Michael was telling the truth, then he was.

It doesn't say much for a relationship if you have to go on TV to be assured your partner is telling the truth. But Springer eagerly assumes the role of marriage-mender.

"You have something to build your marriage on," he told Kathleen and Michael after he passed the lie detector test. There'll be no such happy ending for Tony and Sarah, I suspect. They were arguing before the results and still arguing afterwards.

Sarah said she loved him but couldn't trust him. Hence her question, "where does my lover go at night?". Many of us could supply the answer without a detector test - he leaves the house to get away from her nagging.

The test proved that he hadn't been unfaithful. He demanded an apology from suspicious Sarah. She wasn't about to give him anything but another thick ear. And I'm not lying.