ONE Life: Britain's Best Loo (BBC1); Blair: The Inside Story (BBC2): JENNY says she looks after her public toilets like she does her house.

When this former carer got the job, she made the convenience more homely with flowers, plants and pictures on the wall.

"I'd have a welcome mat if it was left to me," she told Richard Chisnell, who's spent the last 20 years going to toilets all over the country. He doesn't have a urinary problem but is founder of the British Toilet Association which gives the annual Loo of the Year award.

"I love my country, I want to be proud of it," he declared, clearly worried that bog standard bog standards have seen the toilet seat put down forever on half the country's public conveniences in the past decade.

Meanwhile cleaner of the year nominee Jenny told him, "People don't realise what goes on in toilets". This seemed misguided because we know only too well what people do in toilets, and it's not knitting a sweater.

The facts are that, on average, each of us will spend three years of our life in the toilet (and some of it on the toilet).

Chisnell -"a sign of a good loo is a good flush" - and his inspectors pay unannounced visits to 1,000 lavatories to judge the annual awards.

He asked probing questions ("any cottaging problems?"), looked aghast at finding a toilet padlocked because of anti-social behaviour, and gave praise where praise was due. "I would have no hesitation in sitting on that," he said viewing a gleaning seat.

Chisnell, a man impressed by rank and title, visited the Duchess of Northumberland's loos in her impressive new gardens at Alnwick Castle. Privacy screens in the gents and gleaming surfaces rendered him almost speechless.

But Jenny knows the dark side of toilet users. "Animals are cleaner," she said. Humans leave lipstick marks on floor tiles (best not to think what they were doing), dirty sanitary towels on the floor and do number twos where they shouldn't.

The toileters, as Chisnell called his merry band of pan peerers, assembled for their annual meeting at a hotel where owner John Jenkinson has crammed the toilets with paraphernalia including a replica scarecrow of his sister - made for her 50th birthday but sensibly rejected by her - which farts. "I operate it from the bar if I see someone go in," he said.

The Loo of the Year awards are a grand affair and Chisnell fantasises about having the Queen, or a member of her immediate family, to present the prizes. I'd have thought singer and LA toilet admirer George Michael would be a better choice.

Tony Blair refuses to go, so political commentator Michael Cockerell has started his three-part TV biography anyway. This promises to be a thorough trawl through his decade in office, showing how the most popular Prime Minister in our history went to being one of the least popular.

Perhaps the key lies in an early description of the Tories being swept aside in 1997 by a tide of sleaze and incompetence. Some might feel the same description would fit New Labour now.