HENMANIA of another kind has erupted at our house.

Not everyone has been pleased that tennis-playing Tim has torn the TV schedules to tatters all week in his forlorn bid to win at Wimbledon 2003 (BBC1-BBC2).

As early as Saturday, an unsporting umpire at my house, otherwise known as my wife, shouted: "Do they have to keep showing Tim Henman? Is there nothing else but tennis at the moment?"

Fortunately, her comments never reached the heights of those from Greg Rusedski, but I suspect that the All England Club might have felt the odd earth tremor if Timbo had managed to get beyond the backwards-hatted Grosjean on Thursday.

As someone who desperately dreams of a British Mens Singles winner in my lifetime, I'm surprised that, in addition to my wife, there are some people who actually hate Henman.

What is there not to like about the most inoffensive middle class multi-millionaire to ever grace Centre Court? Even when the camera shows his lips coming up with a silent swearword after a mistake, half the country is behaving like Phyllis Lumsden in 1980s comedy Sorry! and saying "Language Timothy".

Now Tim is talking about next year. I just hope my wife can cope with another week-and-a-half of Tim torment plus former champion Boris Becker's Germanic grumblings of expert analysis.

With my resident umpire decidedly off-colour and ill in bed in mid-week, I accepted the invitation to visit the ex-EastEnders retirement home of The Bill (ITV1, Wednesday).

For weeks, the long-running plodding drama has been telling us that sacked Walford star Todd Carty was arriving at Sun Hill to play PC Gabriel Kent.

As it turned out, most of Carty's scenes were with a decomposing corpse which he'd been left to guard as a punishment for upsetting PC Tony Stamp (Graham Cole) - which is an offence akin to kicking Tim Henman up the backside.

I'm sure that the former fruitseller will eventually climb the apples and pears of a police career, but there are a few storylines cluttering up the cells at the moment. PC Des Taviner, the cop chewing on an enormous Scouse accent, finally pulled Sgt Sheelagh Murphy (played by the non-singing Bernie Nolan) with the incredible chat-up line of "you've got a nice home, nice kids and a nice husband... but you want more".

Des had her at a disadvantage, the North-West-born entertainer is the only one who can understand what he's talking about. Another former Eastender, Russell Floyd, has been blackmailed into going undercover as eye-rolling, debt-ridden gambler DC Ken Drummond.

By this time, my wife had recovered sufficiently to join surveillance on DI Samantha Nixon who decided to do no policework at all, unless you count slapping her irritating daughter around the face as civic duty, while being intimidated by ex-lover and villain Glen Weston (who looks amazingly like Royal Shakespeare Company actor Michael Feast). "Is there something wrong with Lisa Maxwell's voice?" asked my wife anxiously as the woman in charge of DI Nixon's character appears to be struggling with a 40-a-day smokers' chest.

All in all, PC Kent must feel like he's on Henman Hill because, currently, The Bill has more cast members than can be listed in both Radio and TV Times.

Published: 05/07/2003