Whose Baby? (ITV1); The Man Who Swears He's Normal: Extraordinary People (five): THE makers of Whose Baby? probably couldn't believe their luck when members of Fathers 4 Justice made headlines by throwing dye over the PM and scaling Buckingham Palace dressed as superheroes.

It gave this one-off drama a topicality and urgency they couldn't have imagined.

Rosemary Kay's script does deal with a father (Barry, played by Andrew Lincoln) fighting for the right to see his child. The difference is that he didn't know he'd become a father. If this had been a C4 or five documentary, it would have been called She Stole My Sperm.

Karen (Sophie Okeonedo) wants a baby but not a husband and gets herself pregnant through self-administered insemination, involving the employment of the contents of a used condom.

Barry only discovers he's a dad when maintenance money is removed from his pay packet. As the law is unable to deal with cases like this, he takes matters into his own hands, dressing in a tiger suit and hiring a cherry picker crane to transport him nine floors up to Karen's flat.

The story was ripe for viewers to take sides and debate who was in the right over issues such as self-inflicted pregnancy, absent fathers and child visiting rights. Lincoln's natural charm made it easy - for me, at least - to side with him.

The Extraordinary People series continued with, well, another extraordinary person. People with involuntary ticks and twitches or who can't stop themselves swearing are often used for comic effect in dramas. Insensitive maybe, but behaviour like that makes you laugh through embarrassment rather than cruelty.

There's no cure for Tourette's, only powerful drugs with side-effects to dampen it down. Through the stories of three men, we found out more.

For years no-one knew Alan had the condition and punished him for it. One teacher tied him to a chair so he wouldn't twitch. He takes medication, described by a doctor as "a blunt therapeutic tool, but one that works".

So does Michael, who finds the anti-psychotic drugs "helpful" if not 100 per cent effective. All the same, his mother noted, if he's drying up a knife you have to watch out in case an involuntary spasm sends it flying in your direction.

Then there's Rob, a PhD student researching Tourette's and refusing to take drugs. He wants to change the way people react to his twitching and swearing. He feels it's part of his personality and, while sorry for any misunderstanding it causes in public, doesn't want to suppress it.

I could only applaud his courage in bucking the system in a bid to convince people that Tourette's is not a problem. The question is: if he dressed up as Superman would people take more notice of his cause?

Published: 26/10/2004