The mad, the bad and the downright sad.

I watched the opening episode of the revamped Crossroads. I couldn't believe it. So I watched the second episode in the hope that the first was a horrible mistake. It wasn't. If anything, the second programme was even more laughable. If you thought Footballers' Wives was trash, wait until you see the new Crossroads - and that's even before Lionel Blair has booked in as a guest star.

New producer Yvon Grace has achieved the impossible and made something even tackier than the original series with its famous wobbly sets and actors even wobblier with their lines. She wanted Dallas at teatime and instead has made a clone of one of those corny American daytime soaps where the women all wear too much make-up and the men have impossibly square jaws.

I can see the new Crossroads becoming addictive, in the same way as glue-sniffing. You know it's bad for you but it feels good at the time. Not wishing to condemn the series on the evidence of just two episodes, I will go away and watch some more (see, I'm an addict already) - and return to the subject later in the week.

More alarming, certainly to any parents with daughters, was Skinny Kids in which children as young as six told how they wanted to be thinner. Laura, Hayley and Sian were 11-year-olds who described themselves as having tummies and legs that were fat when the visual evidence said otherwise.

Seven-year-old Ellen is Laura's little sister and already worrying about her appearance too. The obligatory experts were on hand to suggest reasons for this disturbing trend, but we didn't really need to be told that if their mothers and their sisters talk about weight and shape concerns all the time, something will rub off on others in the household.

Glynis, from Durham, told how six-year-old daughter Vanessa wanted to wear a bikini but didn't know which one to choose because she thought her legs were too fat. Looking at herself in the mirror at bathtime, she told her mother: "I have a fat tummy" and she's stopped finishing meals for fear of getting fat.

While her father blames the telly, her mother worries that doubts about her own self-image have caused Vanessa to think the way she does.

Psychologist Andrew Hill explained how youngsters use nutrition as a scalpel: "You can trim bits of your body off and achieve the body weight you want by reducing what you eat".

Jung is 12 and had been dieting for six months. She weighed seven stone and wanted to lose a stone-and-a-half. She skips 200 times each night to burn off calories, and puts chillies on most of her meals because she read in a magazine that they helped burn calories.

The result of this obsession led Lucy, a 14-year-old suffering from anorexia nervosa, to be sent to a centre for eating disorders. Doctors feared she would die otherwise. She weighed five stone when she arrived. Nine weeks later she had gained a stone-and-a-half and some self-esteem. She'd wanted to be thin because it made her feel "happier, popular and prettier", believing that being slim was the only thing she had going to make her stand out in a crowd.

What none of the youngsters would accept is that they were putting on weight because they are growing up. Getting fat is part of puberty. But society and the media dictate that thin is desirable, with Kylie and Geri being two names mentioned.

No wonder one mother confided she didn't know how to get over the problem. "I'm really concerned for the future," she said.