WHO would have thought watching a hare on a golf course could make such riveting viewing? He didn't do much. He just sat there really, blinked a bit and looked around.

Perhaps that was the attraction. He wasn't plied with alcohol, put in a pen with a group of other hares and encouraged to take part in a range of bizarre, competitive stunts guaranteed to have them at each other's throats.

Neither, thankfully, was he forced to eat any creepy crawlies, redecorate a house in 60 minutes or put down any garden decking. This was reality TV at its best.

Within minutes, I, like four million others, was hooked on BBC2's live natural history programme Britain Goes Wild With Bill Oddie, which uses the latest hidden camera technology featured in programmes like Big Brother.

Every time I turned on to catch up on the thousands of gannets who had settled on a remote rocky island crag, there they were, fascinatingly, just sitting there. Doing nothing.

While police were being called into Channel 4's Big Brother house after inmates trashed the place and threatened to kill each other, we were tuning into shots of young badgers at play. And there they were, rolling around together in the earth, again.

Of course, there were dramatic moments too, like when the young badger fell into a hole. And I had a lump in my throat when the nest of the wagtail family we had been watching so patiently was raided by a mystery predator. Oddie informed us that a staggering 70 per cent of nesting birds don't survive.

We saw wild deer that had made their home in a graveyard and foxes hunting in the city. And the wonder of it all was it was live. So similar scenes were possibly being played out at the same time not far from our own doors.

Meanwhile, stupid, feckless exhibitionist boys and girls are still talking nonsense and behaving appallingly in the crushingly boring and contrived set-up of the Big Brother house. Funnily enough, I can't remember any of the contestants from previous series now. Like the pain of childbirth, my mind has conveniently blocked it all out.

What I can't understand is why anyone is bothering to make this programme any more. Why are so many people who don't have anything to do spending their time watching others doing absolutely nothing?

Big Brother's original audience has moved on. We're watching Britain Goes Wild now. And one day, we may even turn the TV off and go for a walk in the country instead. In the meantime, BBC2, when's the next series?

LIKE most of the nation, I adore England's star player Wayne Rooney. But part of his appeal is he doesn't look anything like a world class footballer. Big, clumsy looking and a bit rough around the edges, I can't help imagining he borrowed an England strip and ran onto the pitch after a drunken bet with his mates in the pub and ended up caught in the game by mistake. But his looks are deceptive and make his displays of incredible skill, speed and strength all the more astounding. Straightforward and fearless, as only an 18-year-old can be, he's unphased by big-name stars who would have more experienced players quaking in their boots, treating them as if they're just lads he's having a kickabout with after school. He makes it look so easy. Life is, inevitably, going to get a lot more complicated for Rooney soon. In the meantime, let's be thankful for his teenage kicks.