I Met Osama Bin Laden (BBC2); Heartbeat (ITV1): HE loves riding horses. He's lost count of the number of children he has. He reads poetry.

He needs to drink a lot of water because of a kidney disease. He's also the man who changed the world by inspiring terrorist attacks across the globe.

Considering he's the most wanted person on the planet, most people, I suspect, know remarkably little about Osama Bin Laden. This documentary was an education to us all.

Perhaps President Bush could be sent a copy to increase his knowledge of the US's sworn enemy, who's declared: "I pray God permits us to turn America into a shadow of herself."

Bin Laden is not a man who makes many public appearances or hawks himself around the glossy magazines ("Inside this week, Osama welcomes us into his glamorous cave home").

He does take advantage of the media for the purposes of spin, inviting TV reporters and journalists round for exclusives. When the Taliban forbade him to give interviews, he invited a representative from Al Jazeera TV to cover his son's wedding. The reporter found himself sitting next to the bridegroom's father, who aired his views and sent the guest away with a wedding video to show the world.

Mostly he sends non-verbal messages to make his point, realising that a picture of the aftermath of an attack like 9/11 conveys much more than words.

Finding people willing to recall meeting him is difficult. But this valuable documentary did a good job of finding people who could offer insights into his background and thinking. A valuable exercise as you have to know your enemy to defeat him.

The young Bin Laden was considerably different to now. At school, he was "rather shy and reserved" and "showed little sign of religious fervour".

His father, an illiterate labourer from Yemen, settled in Saudia Arabia and made his fortune in the construction industry building roads and palaces for the royal family. He died in a helicopter crash when Bin Laden was ten.

Some of his brothers and sisters were educated abroad and embraced western lifestyles. Not Osama Bin Laden. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 marked a change in his thinking, although his leadership qualities were still hidden in 1987. "He would sit on the floor and eat with everyone else. Sometimes he was fun. He knew some Arabic poems," recalled someone who met him that year.

He moved from financing the struggle to fighting. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, when the government rejected Bin Laden's help in favour of American aid, was the turning point. To him, the arrival of foreign troops in the land of holy places was sacrilege.

Perhaps the oddest thing was hearing how he boasted to one editor of "his horticultural project" when he produced a record-breaking sunflower that beat the American's record.

As if to prove to the cynics that it's not just a soft-centred slice of nostalgia, Heartbeat allowed barmaid Gina's baby to die. This was inevitable once medical staff told her everything would be fine. In soap language, this is code that the opposite is true.

She and father Phil Bellamy named the infant Daniel. In true Heartbeat tradition, the tear-stained finale was accompanied by Danny Boy on the soundtrack, to show the makers hadn't lost their touch.

Published: 29/03/2004