ONE Life: Being Brian Harvey (BBC1)

Magnificent 7 (BBC2)

ONE of the more bizarre occurrences of the past year was former E17 singer Brian Harvey being run over by his own car, shortly after two unsuccessful suicide attempts.

This is the singer whose career stalled after he publicly admitted taking ecstasy. He has since seen the error of his ways, putting it in his own inimitable fashion: "Honesty in this business is not the best policy. But eff 'em, you know what I mean, eff 'em."

The ONE Life documentary about his battle to walk again was full of Harvey saying the f-word and "know what I mean". He did nothing to endear himself to anyone, even being beastly to girlfriend Emma B, who stood by him during his recovery.

"I've come to realise that I don't give an eff about what people think. If you don't like me by now, you can eff off," he declared. By this time I was beginning to regret spending 40 minutes watching his struggles.

After being treated in hospital, where 16 metal pins were inserted to hold his body together, he retreated to Emma B's Hastings flat to recover.

He maintained that he wasn't "that thing the papers have turned me into". I'm not so sure. Goodness knows what Butlins audiences thought when he appeared as part of E17 revival gigs.

Harvey knew he'd been bad but showed no regrets. Being a role model wasn't in the contract when he was in E17, he declared. Besides, no-one was 100 per cent whiter than white. E17 management disagreed and sacked him from the band after the ecstasy disclosure.

"I'm bitter because I could have continued as a recording artist. Emma and me could have been sitting in a house like the Beckhams," he said.

I think not somehow, but no-one can accuse Harvey of not having an inflated view of his importance. His attempts to get a fresh recording contract have failed so far.

He's still angry about press coverage. "I'm just a story, you know what I mean," he say. That didn't stop him allowing TV cameras to follow him around for months on end.

Magnificent 7 weren't gunslingers but Jacqui Jackson's children, four of whom - her sons - are, in some way or other, autistic.

Far from being some worthy drama, Sandy Welch's screenplay combined the dramatic with the comic as Helena Bonham Carter's feisty, sexy single mother took everything in her stride as family chaos surrounded her.

A year in the company of the Jacksons could never been described as dull, whether they were causing havoc at a neighbour's Christmas party or being assessed by the experts.

It could so easily have degenerated into mawkish sentimentality but didn't. A by-product may have been to help people understand autism more. As one character noted: "You don't have to be autistic to be hopeless."