Fairy Godfathers (C4): NICK and Colin know how to make an entrance. "Backs to the wall, the queers are here," they shouted, entering a blues bar in Harrogate in search of Simon and Jed, whose (female) partners wanted them given a makeover.

So the fairy godfathers returned to North Yorkshire to help more men get in touch with their feminine side. As the first programme came from the same county, are they trying to tell us something about the nature of Yorkshiremen?

The series - an obvious mix of Wife Swap, What Not To Wear and How Clean Is Your House? - has its limitations and they've become all too clear by now. Nick and Colin each move in with a male of the old chauvinistic school and set about cleaning his habitat, while improving his personal hygiene and fashion sense, and persuading him to say nice things about his wife/girlfriend.

Most of the time you just wonder what the women saw in the men in the first place. Take Jed, a 42-year-old "rock legend" (in Harrogate, if nowhere else) with a penchant for red posing pouches and a collection of "old men's jumpers" gathered from the lost property box at the bar run by friend Simon.

We never really found out what had possessed Emma, 20 years his junior, to decide he was the man for her.

Wife Sharon despaired of Simon, who lived and breathed his bar 24 hours a day, and wore a wardrobe of lurid Hawaiian shirts. His feet smelt too, which wasn't surprising as he'd been wearing the same pair of boots for ten years.

Where are Aggie and Kim or Trinny and Susannah when you really need them?

Fashion and style gurus Nick and Colin have fun resorting to gay stereotypical behaviour from time to time, but otherwise show the common sense and manners singularly lacking in their victims.

Jed's excuse that he couldn't do housework because he suffered from asthma wasn't acceptable. Neither was Simon's refusal to forget about his bar and concentrate on his private life. The fairy godfathers can be as tough taskmasters as any army sergeant major.

I enjoyed watching Simon the sexist being made to play rugby with a women's team. He declared he didn't want a woman to have the power for fear that he'd lose her if she was as good as him. Sounds more like a job for a psychiatrist than a stylist.

It all ended happily enough. Simon threw away his horrid shirts and Jed wrote Emma a love poem. What we want to see now is a progress report to see if they've reverted to their old habits.

Published: 14/05/2004