Young, Posh And Loaded (ITV1); Confessions Of A Cad (C4)

LAST year's documentary about young folk with expensive tastes and money to burn provoked jaw-dropping horror among the poor people who watched it.

Now ITV is giving this posh lot their own series but you still feel they need a dose of the real world to show them just how privileged they are.

Either that or a good slap to wake them up to the fact that not everyone lives in a house where, one of these deplorable young folk informed us, he could sleep in a different bedroom every night of the week and still have two to spare.

Donatella was learning to drive so she could give her chauffeur the boot and have more independence. Daddy bought her first car, and it definitely wasn't an old banger.

Jeffrey the designer equipped it with satellite navigation system (£2,950), in-car cinema (£2,850), custom-dyed lambs wool rugs (£1,500) and a fridge, Play Station 2, and ten-disc DVD player (£3,000). How pleasing it was to see her fail her test the first time.

The less said about the efforts of Victoria, disgraced MP Jonathan Aitken's daughter, to be a rap and hip-hop artist, the better. And as far party king Jonny Sanders goes, I echo his opinion that people would be sitting at home "thinking of me as an arsehole".

That was the most perceptive thing this Harley Street doctor's son said during the whole programme. I expect he'll grow up into someone like James Hewitt, the man who tried to sell Diana's love letters.

Allowing cameras to film him, he admitted, was an attempt "to make me less of a shit". It failed. He came across as thoroughly unpleasant, no matter how many ex-girlfriends told us how charming he was.

Lawyer and advisor Michael Coleman was brokering the deal to sell the letters for $10m. But Hewitt - "I'm between jobs since I left the last one in 1991" - didn't appear to need the money.

He didn't see the sale as immoral or a betrayal of Diana or her sons. "I wouldn't show them any disrespect, but I wouldn't tell them what to do with their own private property, and I don't expect them to tell me that either," he said.

He allowed cameras to film him in the toilet, smoking his pipe in the bath and buying a Big Mac before getting tetchy with the film-makers. Coleman tried to build bridges, inviting them to film Hewitt and his chums have lunch (12 bottles of wine and three bottles of ouzo).

The documentary team sought out old girlfriends, including Emma, who said she was having an affair with him at the same time he was seeing Diana. Her opinion was that he was either "a complete fruitcake or playing very nasty games with people".

Occasionally, he mentioned his relationship with Diana. "It's meant momentous things, knowing her for five years. It's changed my life forever and I don't like talking about it."

He seemed to think he was doing Prince Charles a favour by sleeping with his wife. "He was probably grateful someone was looking after his wife while he was shagging Camilla Parker Bowles," he said gallantly.

While filming an interview in Windsor Great Park, he finally lost patience with the film-makers. "I don't want this to continue. I've had enough" he said, walking off.

That was the last they saw of him. It's not, I suspect, the last we've seen of Hewitt.

Published: 25/07/2003