Notorious (BBC2): A Place In France: An Indian Summer (C4); SOMEWHERE along the line, the sub-title of Notorious changed from The Sex Line King to The Guilty Pornographer.

The line in question would be premium rate. Nick Cracknell has made a fortune giving people satisfaction over the telephone, having made more than £50m from such lines of smutty communication.

He's proof there is money in muck, raking in £100,000 a week from punters calling his 10,000 premium rate numbers. If plans for the Oral Sex Olympics fail, he has something else up his sleeve.

But he's not a happy man and is seeking help through a financial advisor turned psychotherapist called Jeremy who, quite frankly, seems a little odd himself. He chomps on large cigars, writes songs and dresses up to hand out leaflets in the street promoting CDs bearing his inspirational message.

Cracknell's HQ is his house in the Cheshire countryside where he lives with his mum. What he does is legal, but is it moral? For all the programme-makers' efforts to convince us of Cracknell's "underlying feeling of guilt", he only seemed really happy when worrying where the next million was coming from.

He's had severe problems with drink, drugs and gambling. Now he's addicted to money. While he noted that "How To Grow Your Penis Naturally has doubled in revenue what we were doing on the anal sex line", ex-alcholic Maureen was expressing surprise that her son was in such an business. "He's a very moral person, doesn't like swearing and never double dates," she explained.

But he did once blow £3m in 18 months on gambling and, as a child, wandered round his £20,000 a year school clutching a can of cola filled with whisky. He was an alcoholic by the time he left school.

"If it was illegal, immoral or fattening, I was hooked," he admitted.

His seriousness about cleaning up his act was put in doubt when he skipped the chance to be spontaneous on Jeremy's creativity weekend and instead visited a backstreet Manchester sauna to make a few thousand quid selling a gay porn video with the help of its teenage model star.

Perhaps he could bung some money the way of broadcaster and writer Nigel Farrell who, in An Indian Summer, had plans to open an Indian restaurant in a village in the Ardeche.

Friend Nippi Singh, who helped him renovate a French farmhouse in the region (shown in a previous series), turned down the chance to go into business with him. Too much of a risk, he thought.

So Farrell turned to the owner of a South London Indian eating house, but rather spoiled his chances by admitting he had no experience of running a restaurant, knew nothing about Indian food, and couldn't speak much French.

"You must be stark raving mad," declared his potential partner. I think a trip to see Jeremy the shrink would be in order for Farrell.

Published: 30/01/2004