Elocution, Elocution

Kirstie's Home Made Christmas has to be the most pointless programme I have ever seen. Yes, it's just another stage in the relentless poshing-up of Christmas by the likes of Nigella. But what's it for?! Surely no actual human will do any of the things she suggests in this show, other than make mince pies, which she did really badly. The spread at the end looked gaudy and horrible, and unlike the idea of it all looking homemade it in fact looked incredibly manufactured, because none of it had any charm. I actually like Kirstie and have been a fan of her massive buttons and weekly 'Phil tells me that size isn't everything' jokes on Location, Location, Location. But this is such a poor vehicle for her, such a desperate stab at getting her to do anything: 'Oooh, Kirstie and Christmas, that's a winner' says a commissioning editor, not caring what the programme will end up being – which is more of a dog's dinner than Christmas dinner.

She dipped her hand repeatedly in a saucepan of hot water and sprinkled 'edible' glitter on everything, so I can imagine hospitals all over the home counties will now be stuffed with posh people eating tinsel and sticking their hands in the kettle. But it was her comment about markets that really made me laugh: that market stall holders are experts who really know where things have come from. In the case of the markets round my way it's usually from a spate of local burglaries or a factory in Korea.

Still, I sat down and watched it while I had my tea, so the cynical commissioning editor won again.

Lancelot's balls

Teeny tiny Derren Brown jumps on a small podium to meet his adoring audience at eye height. He predicted the lottree earlier this week, clever wee thing, and now he's explaining how.

A woman from the audience who doesn't like mice has to put her hand in boxes which may contain a mouse to show fear heightening predictability. The big reveal is that there is no mouse. Then, to up the non-existent stakes, a pre-recorded guy has to stamp on polystyrene cups which may contain an upturned knife. Clever little Derren correctly predicts the cups the guy will not stamp on, and good job because the last cup is hiding a mouse. Applause all round.

Splendidly, though he demonstrates these theories, he doesn't explain them in any depth. It's the most delicious bit of showmanship. I love a bit of devious psychology. But then he opens up a bit more. Some 'deep maths' (whatever that is) in a heads and tails experiment. And then, mirroring a classic guess the weight of the ox county fair competition, he applies the wisdom of crowds to the lottery. A group of people are asked to predict the next balls in a lottery sequence, which he then averages out. With this strategy he got as far as predicting three of the numbers. Woo.

Then he's onto automatic writing, the old spiritualist trick, with his panel. Four numbers correct. And the day of the lottery draw dawns and his team are off again, automatic writing. Numbers correct as we knew, and the group are ecstatic. But then he offers an alternative solution to the doubters, smuggling weighted balls into the machine, which he strenuously denies.

I am utterly credulous. I uncritically believe anything magicians or showmen like tiny DB say. So seeing someone so fundamentally untrustworthy demonstrate the different theories with such scant and partial explations was never really going to be very much help. Especially as he wants to continue his career and use similar techniques over and over.

He's funny, he's smart, he's devious, he's a nightmare. Derren is a Bond villain, Rasputin and every boyfriend I've ever had. This show was the obvious anticlimax it was set up to be after his audacious stunt. But I don't want to see how he does it really. Perhaps I'm naive or lack curiosity, but the amazing thig is he did it. And, tiny and annoying as he is, he's done something none of us will ever do - not choose the right numbers for the lottery but explode the dreams of a greedy nation that these things are easy.

Donatella like it is

Rupert Everett has decided to do the honourable public school gay thing, and pretend to be an expert about something. He's chosen Byron, mainly because it allows him to say 'fucking' a lot while wearing trackies on a gondola, much as his last subject, Sir Richard Burton, allowed him to do the same in bedouin tents.

Essentially, he's choosing subjects that allow him to talk about hedonistic sex ad nauseum. And the nausea does come, in this case while he's having a tenuously Byronic gonorrhea test. Still, he rolls out the experts: historians, fancy dress costumiers and Donatella Versace, who nods while Rupes drones on about Caroline Lamb and then asks whether Byron should have had therapy. Good point, Donzi.

This documentary is like a someone paraphrasing the vainglorious and innacurate Byron scholars in Stoppard's play Arcadia in the manner of Cher from Clueless. It would have been brilliant as a Kath and Kim-style comedy, but sadly he really meant all this stuff. Even the hideously patronising rent-a-camp ending in a bingo hall. Poor old Oscar is next, I fear.

How To Look Bad Naked

Oh, Embarrassing Bodies. Feels like I'm having fifties gay aversion therapy: shots of studly Christian intercut with pus, eczema and surgery. Might as well show me pictures of him stripping and then give me electric shocks to my ... nether regions ...

Then we're watching him sleep. Aw. A test for sleep apnea apparently. I worry about that as I have snoring that could weaken the foundation of a house, and unlike Dr C I am not some super fit stud-muffin. I fit the sleep apnea target market of male, over forty and overweight (well, just).

My heart reaches out to the people on Embarrassing Bodies. Hilda, with psoriasis on her poor feet, is a case in point. It looked incredibly painful but her steroid cream did the trick – which is more than it ever did with my Dad, who was plagued with the psoriasis of almost Singing Detective proportions for much of his life.

What really annoys me though, despite my fondness for Dr Christian's perfect form, is that the doctors are all so attractive. Some poor guy turns up with pus oozing from his scalp, or a hairy woman with a polycystic ovary plonks herself down on the plastic chair, and there before them is an outrageously groomed and glossy doctor to make them feel much more self-conscious about their problem. Still, I guess it takes a certain kind of exhibitionist to show their prolapse on prime time. After all, the subtext is How To Look Bad Naked.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh... FASHION!

I love Janet Street Porter, but I don't want Gok going on about her 'bangers'. Gok's Fashion Fix? No, no, no, this will never do. Where's the zero-esteemed pond-based creature weeping into her Hulk-sized fleece and streaking in a Debenhams window with her tits hidden coquettishly behind a deep fat fryer? Where's the crowd of big birds in white bras moaning about bronzing powder? And where's the cheap but cathartic denoument as our pond creature trudges up and down a catwalk in the Trafford Centre in her pants? 'Resort!' shouts Gok, excitedly. No, Gok, you know the rules. There can't be fashion on TV without humiliation, self-flaggelation and a journey. This is all way too civilised.

Followed by: 'I'm Alexandra Tolstoy and I've always been mad about horses.' Fuck off, love.

Spencer and Allsopp (Deceased)

Watching old Location, Location, Locations on E4: period pieces from an age of optimism and modernity, now every bit as dated, absurd and blackly comic as old episodes of The Prisoner or Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased).