TO BE quite polite about it, the age of chivalry seems dead. My wife lasted through 15 minutes of Bee In Your Bonnet (BBC2, Tuesday), where the Campaign for Courtesy pleasantly outlined how it was being ignored by most of Britain, before announcing: "What a bunch of boring twits, no wonder no one takes them seriously."

When it was pointed out to her that it might be quite pleasant if people were nicer to each other she responded with what can only be described, politely, as the English archers' gesture at Agincourt, a raspberry and the cry: "Well, I'm going to do the ruddy (well it sounded like ruddy) washing up. I think I'm polite enough already, thank you very much." A convert lost here, I fear.

Then again, the programme was being presented by journalist Amanda Platell, who has the dubious distinction of being William Hague's spin doctor - and denies being the person who suggested his disastrous 14 pints a day drinking claim.

Platell tried to persuade the Campaign's polite vicar, former Benny Hill girl, secular theatre critic and optician not to be quite so, well, good-mannered when it came to asking celebrities and supermarkets for help. "Don't have National Politeness Day during the party political conference season," was another gem. I'll drink to that.

What the politeness people would have made of Brat Camp (C4, Tuesday) only someone armed with a swear box is likely to discover. My youngest son was particularly determined to watch six of Britain's most obnoxious teenagers being sent off to Utah's Redcliff Ascent Wilderness Treatment Camp in a last attempt to reform their drinking, smoking, drug-taking and abusive personalities.

To her delight, my wife seized on the camp's policy of removing all body piercings - forcibly with a pair of pliers if necessary - to remind her son that most parents aren't in favour of today's trend of mutiple self-mutilation.

My son's keen on tunnels, round cylinders of metal forced into the lobes of your ears, and to my mind the only thing worse is facing Mike Tyson wearing boxing gloves without his gum shield.

Rudeness is, of course, the art we all remember on the box. Britain's Best Sitcom: Open All Hours (BBC2, Saturday) was a quite masterly presentation of the nation's favourite nasty small shopkeeper Arkwright (Ronnie Barker) by Clarissa Dickson Wright. Roy Clarke's brilliant scripts still make you laugh after 20 years of repeats and the shop's snap-jawed till took a starring role.

The sensible money must be on Arkwright, although the big day for The Vicar Of Dibley dawns, in all senses, tonight.

The ultra-polite Parkinson (BBC1, Saturday) saw him cope with Harry Connick Jr describing how he got into trouble in North America by describing a visit to Canada as being so cold that part of his anatomy now looked like a stack of buttons.

Pop legend Lionel Richie and Yorkshire-born star of Star Trek and The X-Men Patrick Stewart fell about laughing. Isn't it strange that a family newspaper would prefer not to print Harry's actual words while TV can cope with just about anything after the watershed... or perhaps all the polite people now live in Utah.

Published: 13/03/2004