THE main thing wrong with asking the question Are You Telepathic? (C5, Thursday) is the obvious response: You should know the answer already. Host Carol Vorderman wouldn't have liked what my wife was thinking.

"She's lost all that weight and still got a big bum. Aren't I awful?" she announced. Meanwhile, failed Celebrity Big Brother contestant Anne Diamond tried to send a telepathic message of an image to the watching millions. Perhaps it was the fact that she was thinking about a star, but out of the 93 per cent who phoned in to confirm their belief in telepathy, just 19 per cent got the answer right. Most went for wavy lines, which probably says more about what's going on inside our heads than most of us want to know. Magician Paul Zenon seemed to be on the right wavelength by demonstrating how he could ensure the majority of the studio audience would think the same thought. He asked them all to draw a big, bold, simple picture in a few seconds. Zenon predicted most would draw a house, but he also had a picture of a boat in his pocket just in case. Most people drew one or the other. Knowing the influences on your audience was a more likely explanation than telepathy, Zenon argued.

With quirky programmes like this, you need a strong sense of the ridiculous and the parents of disabled children also develop a dark sense of humour as a coping mechanism. Born To Be Different (C4, Tuesday) follows six disabled children and their parents as they cope with the first three years of life. Around 5,000 British babies in the womb are diagnosed as disabled each year. At least half of these pregnancies are terminated. Arthrogryposis (twisted limbs) for Zoe, the rare chromosome disorder partial trisomy 9p (a severe breathing disorder) for Shelbie and William's 60 fits a day from tuberous sclerosis were disorders with frightening names and effects. Not all sets of parents could cope and Shelbie's mum was already alone. My wife and I are only too familiar with spina bifida and the clock rolled back 24 years to the birth of our own son as parents Rachel and Richard decided to go ahead with having a daughter called Emily - even though they knew she had the condition. The silence that fell over us was finally broken by my wife saying: "If you were told you could keep the disabled child you had or have it replaced by a different child without problems which would you chose? Could you really give up the personality of the first child for a complete stranger?"

I think it will take more than telepathy to work that answer out.