Supernanny knows best

WHEN the Supernanny first came bounding onto our telly-screens, many wondered what made this woman so special that she knew all the best-kept secrets to good parenting. After all, she didn’t have any children of her own and her use of the English vocabulary left a teeny bit to be desired.

But years down the line, and parents the world over now sing her praises after a simple tried-and-tested “naughty step”

technique did just the trick in taming their wayward offspring.

Jo Frost returns with Extreme Parental Guidance, ready to deal with more badly-behaved kids and help out their beyond-desperate parents.

In Supernanny, her no-nonsense approach and simple yet wildly effective methods of calming out-of-control kids, she became one of the most talked about women on telly – and even became a talking point among the Tory Party as its members debated anti-social behaviour.

She’s now seen in 48 countries around the world and counts Oprah Winfrey among her biggest fans.

So it might come as a shock to some that Jo actually fell into nannying by accident, after leaving school and taking a theatre college course with hopes of pursuing a passion for acting.

Two years down the line, though, and she’d become a full-time nanny – it wasn’t long before her now-famous straight-talking advice earned her the respect of desperate parents and caught the eye of television producers.

“I still loved what I was doing, but I knew that I had reached a level where I had to take the next step up. I saw an advert in a magazine for Supernanny, so I went for it,” she recalls.

So what does she think to her on-screen persona? “People think I’m terrifying but I’m really not. I am firm, yes, definitely firm, but I also have fun. I like my champagne, perhaps a rum and Coke, a laugh with the girls, all of that. Honest.”

In this ne series, she’s taking on sixyear- old Jack, who leaves his mother battered and bruised every bedtime. He’s brave enough to take a swing at Jo when she intervenes (rather him than us), but can she succeed in bringing some calm to this family in crisis?

She’s also brought in to help five-yearold superhero fan George, who’s become lost in his fantasy world.

AFGHANISTAN has had a profound effect on Britain in the past decade. Billions of pounds have been spent and hundreds of lives have been lost fighting there.

Most people see it as a country forever at war, but for centuries it’s been a destination for explorers and adventurers. So what makes this land so fraught, and yet so fascinating?

In Afghanistan: The Unknown Country, the final part of BBC’s season of documentaries to mark a decade of involvement in one of world’s most complex and dangerous regions, Lyse Doucet takes a trip across parts of Afghanistan that don’t feature on the news.

In the North, she meets a Mujahadeenturned- governor with dreams of building a glittering Afghan Dubai, while in the southern city of Kandahar, bodybuilders have high hopes of becoming the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.

NOT too long ago, British cities at rush hour were a sea of grey suits, bowler hats and umbrellas. The contrast with today is stark, with a shift away from suits to smart casual, including jeans and even in some quarters trainers, T-shirts and flip-flops.

However, there is still something special and quintessentially British about a suit, and in the documentary, The Perfect Suit, Alastair Sooke looks at the history of the garments that make up the outfit.

He traces the rise to prominence of the now-traditional jacket, trousers and waistcoat design – as sported by public figures including politician Keir Hardie and King Edward VIII in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries – and explores how it became the mass-market product we know today.

He also follows its fluctuating popularity in subsequent decades and interviews some of the world’s top designers, including Paul Smith, Antony Price, Gordon Richardson and Patrick Grant.