Real Life: Love On The Run (ITV1): Two weeks after her 16th birthday, Wendy Kelly ran away with married father-of-three Adrian Bristow, a man more than twice her age.

Now 17 and a mother, Wendy said: "We are happy. I don't understand why people can't be happy for us."

The Real Life documentary provided plenty of evidence for the hostile reaction of some of their family members. Not that the lines of communication are open. When the couple wed in Gretna Green, Adrian's mother was the only relative present.

Wendy has no contact with her mother Christine, not telling her about the wedding or her pregnancy. "I don't want her to have anything to do with the baby," she declared.

Adrian's ex-wife June was equally bitter, saying the children really missed their father, that he'd only been home to see them twice in a year, and gave them no financial support.

Wendy ran away with Adrian without telling her mother, who reported her as a missing person. The couple came out of hiding to appear on the ITV show Trisha, talking to her mother on the phone on the programme.

This was typical of the runaway lovers, who seemed determined to conduct their life in public. First Trisha, and then allowing the Real Life cameras to film them over a year. Yet a phone call to Wendy's worried mother - who refused to take part in the documentary - wasn't in their plans.

Forget all those cliched, rose-tinted views of lovers on the run. Wendy and Adrian did have only their love to keep them warm as they were both out of work and living in a third-floor flat with little heating.

They first met when Adrian drove the bus that took Wendy to school. "I just looked at him and a spark went off inside me," she explained. He was the only person in whom she could confide about fellow pupils' verbal bullying and mickey-taking.

They took the decision to run off in the summer of 2001 after hours of soul-searching. When they finally came out of hiding, they moved to a town where they had no friends, no jobs, and lived on benefits. Some evenings were spent at bingo because it was warmer there. Hardly the ideal way to start a life together.

The couple did make contact with Wendy's dad, Mick, although neglected to tell him she was pregnant. "I'm trying to find the right moment to tell my dad," she said. She never did find that moment, just as her dad failed to go through with his promise to buy a house and rent it out to them.

It was left to the local council to re-house them by the end of the film, although the future didn't look much brighter for them.

"You can't choose who you fall in love with. You can't turn it on like a switch," said Adrian. "It's nobody else's business. When junior comes along, it will be the three of us against the world."

Carping around

Augustus Carp Esq, Friargate Theatre, York

The 1924 novel on which this play is based has been described as "the funniest unknown book in the world" and earned praised from the likes of Anthony Burgess, Frank Muir and Kenneth Williams.

So York-based Riding Lights Theatre Company has much to live up to in its telling of this satirical tale of Augustus Carp, a gentleman at large in Edwardian society.

Bridget Foreman's adaptation and director Paul Burbridge's production are both lively and inventive, and played in an appropriately over-the-top manner by a hard-working cast.

Any rough edges to Carp's outrageous antics will undoubtedly be smoothed out as the run progresses. Already Jonathan Race's portly Carp is a comic joy of over-indulgence and indigestion well able to take centre stage and hold it. Between them, Fiona Battisby, Fred Denno, Vicki Hackett and Mark Payton play the rest of the characters with a nice eye for detail.

But perhaps the real star is Sean Cavanagh's design - a large cupboard that opens to reveal the action taking place on an adaptable set that constantly springs surprises, often courtesy of the zipped-up walls from which objects and people spring.

Steve Pratt

* Until July 5. Tickets (0845) 9613000

Published: 17/06/2003