The Man Who Ate His Archbishop's Liver? (C4): Noah's Ark (BBC1); WHO thinks of these catchpenny tabloid titles designed to attract an audience to a serious documentary that otherwise they'd probably not bother to watch?

The question mark at the end of The Man Who Ate His Archbishop's Liver? alerted you that doubt surrounded that particular accusation. This documentary about former Ugandan leader Idi Amin might just as well have been called The Man Who Ate Children? or The Man Who Used His Son As A Human Sacrifice? as he was suspected of both.

What was certain was that beneath the comic mix of buffoon and murderer was an unpredictable man who used his power to kill and torture his subjects. As one person noted, there was no need to embellish his reputation with tales of child-eating and suchlike as the truth was awful enough already.

Unluckily for film-maker Elizabeth C Jones, he died before she had the opportunity to interview him. He died last August in Saudi Arabia, where he'd lived in enforced seclusion after fleeing there 24 years ago following his eight-year reign of terror in Uganda.

He was never tried for any of his crimes and, even today, there are many within Uganda who believe him innocent. There's a nostalgia for his regime, as he was generous to the people. Well, those he wasn't torturing, murdering and eating (allegedly).

Many of his relatives were only too happy to talk to Jones and tell her that the world misunderstood him. His son HajI Ali Idi Amin Dada said: "He was a ruler, a lot things happened, so he is blamed". Alarmingly, he wants to follow his father and become a politician.

He's one of Idi Amin's 50 or more children from five wives and countless mistresses. Another statistic was that his victims may have run into hundreds of thousands. They include ordinary people as well as the foreign minister who went missing after upsetting him, and the archbishop arrested and killed. Victims and witnesses spoke on camera about the atrocities. Photographs were found of blood-stained torture chambers.

As for the cannibalism, Amin's personal cook said he'd seen no evidence, certainly no human heads in the fridge as one story has it. All he could remember was seeing three thighs of cows stored there.

There would have been plenty to eat aboard Noah's Ark because, as presenter Jeremy Bowen pointed out, there are 30 million species on earth at the last count. At 50 pairs a second, it would have taken 35 years just to load the vessel two-by-two

That wasn't the only flaw in the biblical account. Experts claim Noah couldn't have built out of wood a boat which, according to measurements in the book of Genesis, would have been "as big as the Titanic".

And, if there really had been such a major global flood, why is there no evidence anywhere in the world?

The programme used the by-now familiar mix of computer graphics, reconstruction and expert opinion to investigate Noah's story. The conclusion was that the Genesis account was based on a Babylonian story about a businessman who built a boat to transport livestock, grain and beer and was caught in a regional flood.

Just as in the case of Idi Amin, the truth has been embellished for an even better story.

Published: ?22/03/04