'HE'S the kind of man you could punch if you had to live with him," said my wife regarding the unfortunate celebrity Mike Read who appeared in The Life Laundry (BBC2, Wednesday).

"I thought you already lived with a man you felt like punching," I quipped back rather too quickly for my own good. Fortunately, Mr Read, at least, was out of range as the former Radio 1 and TV presenter tried to defend box after box of old tat salted away in his South Downs home. Read seemed to be outraging an entire nation of clean-minded women with his string of excuses for hanging on to Radio 1 roadshow T-shirts and personalised mugs. "He's got an excuse for everything," raged my wife as Mr Read tried to be Mr Right in arguments with presenter Dawna Walter before parting with 35 bags for charity and 11 to the crusher. One contribution was his book of Britain's 100 most eligible bachelors (Read was No 66) now he's marrying interior designer Eileen Johnstone. I wonder how hard she punches?

Having taken a battering of late, ITV seems to be waking up to the demands of older viewers. There is a definite suspicion Rosemary and Thyme (Sunday and then shunted to last night) and Sweet Medicine (Thursday) were clever titles first and plots were added later. Even so the opportunity to see former Good Life sexpot Felicity Kendal and Patricia Hodge - who once had the name Phyllida Erskine-Brown in Rumpole Of the Bailey - is an absolute delight. You could argue the pair need to borrow a little of Cliff Richards' cast-off botox, but craggy-faced Warren Clarke manages without and he topped the bill in double-episode The Debt (BBC1, Sunday and Monday). Clarke played ex-con Geoff Dresner being tricked into a safe-cracking job which led to arson and death. The script didn't seem to allow much sympathy for the victim, but there was an opportunity to see the sultry acting ability of Nina Sosanya, who played the policewoman trying to put Clarke's character behind bars. She's heading to the North-East in November to star in As You Like It in the Newcastle Royal Shakespeare Company season.

The BBC cameras beat her up here as Restoration (BBC2, Tuesday) finally arrived in the region. For those who get no further than The Simpsons, this series is following the Pop Idol phone vote formula of asking viewers which crumbling old British ruin is worth saving with £3m of public funding. Before we get into the subject of Sir Bobby Robson's transfer budget, the real candidates were what's left of Ravensworth Castle near Gateshead, the country's best PoW camp at Harperley, near Wolsingham, and Yorkshire interloper Wentworth House. True to form, the BBC announced Ravensworth celebrity advocate Kate Adie as coming from Newcastle - she was raised in Sunderland - and showed loads of pictures of the Angel Of The North. At least she was knowledgeable. Harperley's cause wasn't helped by Michael Wood knowing absolutely nothing about the place and discussing his uncle's World War One shrapnel wounds instead. What I do love is the Restoration experts who regularly say: "This place looks in dire condition... let's have a look inside."