"WHERE'S Alvin?" whinged my wife as yet another smarty pants programme about being thrifty arrived on our screens this week without the avuncular US presenter Mr Hall.

His rib-tickling and slightly camp Your Money Or Your Life series on BBC2 has been replaced by Smart Spenders (Wednesday, BBC1) with the scarily-smiling 'matron knows best' attitude of home-bred Jane Furnival.

Some of her inspired ideas didn't meet with much approval from Mr Thrifty's other half in my house. Furnival's targets were the free-spending Taylor family of Somerset who were managing to get through £45,830.20 a year in cruises, shopping trips to New York, clothes, undriven cars, cigarettes, booze and nights out. Debts of tens of thousands meant they had to sell their Pickwick's Inn business.

Her solution was to put the family of five - mum, dad, one adult child and two teenagers - on a £150 a week budget. Soon mum was raking through a mountain of frozen food in a chest freezer at home to replace the frequent takeaways.

"Some of that stuff has labels saying 2003 - if you start eating that stuff you're going to be bad," said my Mrs Thrifty.

Somehow, Furnival dragged the 19-year-old student daughter into a charity shop to turn a £200 a week new clothes habit into £3.50 an item bargain hunting. "That does nothing for your boobs dear," said Mrs T as the poor girl paraded around in a second-hand stripy jumper.

"I think this a horrible programme because she's weird and I prefer Alvin," was the final verdict. At the last count, I could just about close our chest freezer thanks to the 2-for-1 'bargain offers' at the supermarket. So Jane Furnival does have a point, if only she didn't dress from the charity shop rack and recommend having your hair done by further education students.

Must-see entertainment was Acorn Antiques - The Musical (ITV1, Saturday) for a behind-the-scenes look at the show which has now opened in the West End. Banal questions put to Victoria Wood, the creator, and long-time confederate Julie Walters by showbiz journalists made me hang my head about my profession. "Was this always going to be a musical?" "No, it was never a musical in the first place" kind of thing.

You soon understoodd the bond between Wood and Walters, as the former constantly re-wrote songs and dialogue while the latter only stopped learning lines and rehearsing to sleep. The art of not taking yourself too seriously was shown to be a very hard slog.

Parkinson (ITV1, Saturday) eclipsed Test the Nation on BBC1 with the inspired inclusion of Northern comic Peter Kay, who made his name as Parkie's warm-up man. Kay's no singer but is destined for No 1 with pal Tony Christie and (Is This The Way To) Amarillo for Comic Relief. A clip from the Red Nose Day video is included on the CD and Kay had the studio in stitches about tiny Ronnie Corbett tripping on a treadmill during filming and being unable to get up again. The only helper in sight was incapacitated by a broken collar-bone. Mind you, Jane Furnival would have avoided this by having Salvation Army helpers backing Mr Kay on comb and paper.

Published: 19/03/2005