The Curse Of Blue Peter (five)

Naked Celebrity Ambition (five)

THERE are times you don't want to watch soaps, dramas about doctors or detectives, or serious documentaries. All you want to do is wallow in some trash TV, and this double bill from five was TV at its trashiest and most tasteless.

Not that I'm not objecting. While dredging up all sorts of naughtiness concerning former presenters of the BBC's long-running children's programme, The Curse Of Blue Peter retained a sense of humour. Like the glorious moment when Janet Ellis, who became an unmarried mother during her time on the show, showed how to make your own Blue Peter scandal.

We learnt to make a pregnancy testing kit from a Biro and piece of litmus paper. Then she uttered those immortal words, "Here's one I made earlier" - and on came her teenage son, the cause of all the tut-tutting 15 years ago.

Nothing gives us more pleasure than seeing the rich and famous with egg on their faces or trousers round their ankles. Blue Peter presenters have worked tirelessly to keep us entertained in this way. This was, we were warned, "a torrid tale of drugs, death, disaster, pornography, lies, deceit, distemper and adultery - and that's just the pets".

The first presenter, Christopher Trace, provided an early scandal. On the programme's summer trip to Norway, this married man not only embraced its culture but one of its women. Clean-cut presenter Peter Duncan was revealed to have made a soft porn movie. Mark Curry's naked bum while taking a mud bath caused a rumpus. They all helped put the blue in Blue Peter.

Curry refused to be one half of a dog act, leaving youngest-ever presenter Yvette Fielding to look after Bonnie "the hell-hound". Fielding felt she was bullied by the producer, who'd phoned her up at midnight to talk about the next day's programme. The ever-jolly John Noakes assumed he'd be able to keep Shep the dog when he left, but was told the canine star was a BBC prop and was going nowhere.

When Richard Bacon was caught red-handed and white-nosed snorting cocaine, he had to go. But not before children's TV boss (and now BBC1 controller) Lorraine Heggessey went on TV to apologise to the nation's children for his behaviour. She stopped at giving him a good smack on the bum (probably because she knew a lot of BBC presenters enjoyed that sort of thing). Anthea (how the mighty have fallen) Turner participated in a joke about eating chocolate - an echo of Flakegate - to show she was a good sport.

Naked Celebrity Ambition didn't bother to consult its participants, merely showing clips of famous performers without clothes, accompanied by comments along the lines of "We take a peek down under at Nicole Kidman". Unexpected - and not altogether welcome - surprises included Ruth Madoc, David Hasselhoff and Pam St Clement (EastEnders' Pat) displaying their dangly bits.

The depths to which the makers were prepared to sink was illustrated by the clip of a disrobed Catherine Zeta-Jones. All they could find was a ropey Portuguese sub-titled version of the obscure movie. There are no prizes for finding a film in which Helen Mirren appeared nude. She's top of the "repeat offenders", having had nude parts in 30 of her 36 films.