The secrets hidden beneath a Buddhist monk's robes.

AMONG all the big money game shows and quizzes encouraging people to stab fellow contestants in the back, there are still programmes stuck in a time warp.

You don't need to be Mensa's top brain to work out that Brainteaser doesn't take a big chunk out of C5's budget. The hour-long show gives away just £3,000, plus a few £250 wads to viewers. Very cost effective, I imagine.

The presenter can't cost them much. He's a bloke in a red jumper called Craig Stevens, whose behaviour will give Chris Tarrant no sleepless nights about losing his job on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Craig said it all in his opening remarks: "Over the next hour you will see the irony of a man without one hosting a show that needs one." A brain, presumably.

Anyway, Craig gets terribly excited about viewers being able to win a paltry £250. He can hardly contain his enthusiasm as studio contestants try to solve various word games, like anagrams and crossword clues.

Mark Curry is no more watchable as the new host of Catchphrase. He begins by telling a few bad jokes, contestants are encouraged to recount a humorous story and then have to guess well-known phrases from computer animations that look like they've been drawn by backward chimpanzees.

A picture of a man's arm containing a room represents "elbow room". A woman holding a baby while drinking a glass of white liquid illustrates "mother's milk". Not the most intellectual of TV game shows, you'll agree.

Some are just plain silly. Consider an illustration showing three figure fours and three plus signs. A frowning Kate gave the correct answer, plus-fours. "You look really confused," noted Curry. I thought it was easy, but I had the answer".

Thank goodness for Liar, which is good fun if hardly original. Faced with six people all claiming the same thing, the audience must find out which is telling the truth. If they're right, they share £10,000 between them. If not, the money goes to the contestant whose lying has fooled them.

Rachel, who was offering her virginity to the highest bidder, was dismissed after claiming to have advertised in Horse and Hound "for someone to come and take my precious gift".

The audience's judgement faltered after that. Finalist Jonathan the virgin schoolboy turned out to be 17, had lost his virginity at the age of ten, and was the father of a seven-month-old baby.

Best of all, beneath the orange robes of Buddhist monk Ling Lee Chung was Kevin the Camden GP. "I have never been intimate with a woman," he admitted - before adding, "but I have slept with a heck of a lot of men.