Real Life: Noisy Neighbours (ITV1): BAD moods, bags under the eyes and uncontrollable yawning are the usual signs of a bad night's sleep so it was remarkable that the El Sady and Gulliver families felt fit enough to face the cameras for this study of noisy neighbours.

Between them the two London families had suffered five years without a decent night's sleep and so just as they were about to reach breaking point the noise officers and TV cameras were called in.

The silence enforcers are called out 365 days a year to listen to people's complaints, measure the noise and then face the neighbours who are making others' lives a living nightmare.

Mrs Gulliver explained she had been forced to give up her job when the noise from her neighbour's TV at night got too much to bear but it soon transpired that she had never actually told the man that his viewing habits were disturbing her. To top it all, warning letters from the environmental department had been going to the wrong address, so when the offending TV addict was eventually confronted he seemed justified in living up to his loud and irrational reputation.

Elsewhere a group of transvestites claimed they were being discriminated against because of their flamboyant lifestyles rather than their loud parties and a drunken fop got very upset when asked to turn down his blasting stereo.

It was easy to feel sorry for the hoards of people plagued by the selfish behaviour of their neighbours but when the team were asked to visit a millionaires row in Kensington the sympathy soon dried up. The residents in this very fashionable area complained that the noise from the Circle Line tube trains had got unbearable in recent years.

It seemed the rumbling of the trains into the early hours was disturbing their quiet evenings in with a G&T and a game of bridge.

The noise officers agreed the sound was excessive but taking the London Underground to court would be an expensive exercise.

You couldn't help wondering why the well-to-do residents had bought houses over a major tube line in the capital city if they wanted to live in blissful silence.

One of the people affected was hypnotist Paul McKenna who opened his door to let the noise officers listen to the row the trains made. Surely his time could have been better spent using his skills to send his neighbours into deep, dark, peaceful sleep regardless of the rumblings below their homes.

Published: 24/06/2003