Trouble At The Top (BBC2)

GLASWEGIAN businesswoman Michelle Mone had a clothing crisis. Her models were refusing to wear thong knickers.

"If I had my way, I'd sack them," she said under her voice, as an assistant conducted delicate negotiations minutes before the lingerie show was due to start.

Mone heads the company selling the Ultimo, the world's first liquid silicone-filled, cleavage-enhancing bra. Her business partner and husband Michael remained a shadowy figure in this documentary, as did her children (three if I counted correctly).

This was very much about the determination of a woman from a deprived area of Glasgow to make a success of her boob-boosting creation. Cameras followed her over two years as she attempted to go global.

As narrator Jim Carter informed us in solemn tones: "This woman wants the whole world to wear her bra. And she's not going to let anything get in her way". It was a crusade that took her "from Glasgow to Stockholm to Sydney and to hell and back" as she tried to become the undisputed queen of the lingerie world.

This was a good story, well told as Mone decided that she wanted to sell more than just bras in Britain. She was nothing if not enterprising. When a department store cancelled an order, leaving her with shelves of spare stock, she unloaded it through a money-off offer in a Scottish newspaper.

That convinced her to sell directly to the public on the Internet rather than depending on shops. "I want to show the whole world a wee Scottish company can take on the big boys and win," she said. But she'd reckoned without models refusing to wear thongs, although you couldn't help thinking that's surely part of their job description.

The subject matter did, of course, provide ample excuse for shots of scantily-clad models parading around in items from the whole Ultimo range. And who should the camera spot in the crowd, loitering with intent to ogle? None other than nasty Pop Idol judge Simon Cowell.