NO-HEADLINE

Do you want to lose pounds now? Henlow Grange health farm, featured in last night's Cutting Edge (C4), can certainly arrange it, if you do. You will lose hundreds just paying for your accommodation, and what with an extra treatment here at pounds 40 and another there at pounds 60, you could make it into the thousands if you stay for long enough. These results are guaranteed. Whether you will lose any weight is a different matter altogether, being more dependent on your own will-power. Stuart Miller, a cheerful Glaswegian with the figure of a bowling bowl, lost four pounds - a good effort for a short stay, you might feel, but not much of a dent in the 322 he had brought with him. Lucy Barry, a pretty, bashful girl whose mother had treated her to a fortnight's luxurious abstinence, lost five pounds, despite a raid on a local kebab-shop (which had a fabulous electric kebab-saw, presumably to keep up with the demand from fugitive dieters), and a late-night moral tangle with a Mars Bar which was worthy of Ingmar Bergman ("I haven't got anyone close to me here, so who else to turn to but my friend chocolate?"). But did either of these people harvest any health during their stay?

The broad conclusion of Stephen Finnigan's equable, even-tempered film was that they hadn't, though it was never conspicuously hostile in its method. Mr Finnigan must have very trustworthy features, having persuaded people who dislike their bodies to reveal them in unflattering close- up. Their trust was rewarded; apart from some slightly Donald McGill moments in the swimming pool, the film never felt exploitative of the various unhappinesses that had driven people here. And what rapidly became clear was that people go to such establishments not to be improved, but to be spoiled, even if the pampering takes the dubious form of being encased in paraffin wax or smeared with a substance that looked like green peanut butter. "I wanted to come away from Henlow feeling a different person," said a giggly woman called Janet, who had arrived with a suitcase bulging with Kettle Chips, bottles of wine and biscuits to ease her way out of the chrysalis.

By and large, most of the customers shared her eventual satisfaction (apart from one woman who seemed to have gone solely to indulge her passion for nit-picking), but what you couldn't ever quite shift was the sense that the "cure" was an intimate part of the disease, every weigh-in and fat-free buffet only confirming the general sense that bodies are there to let us down, visible badges of our moral worth. Henlow Grange was studded with weighing machines (there was even one in the middle of the manicured lawn, to remind strolling guests of their original sin), but a genuine health farm would surely ban these pernicious devices from the premises altogether, sending away their fretful devotees with the scales fallen from their eyes.

I think I will run amok with a semi-automatic rifle if I see one more time-lapse shot of American freeways, with cars zipping along like tracer bullets. But Alex Holmes, who made World in Action's report on airbags (ITV) at least had a better excuse than most directors for resorting to this baleful cliche, given that his subject was the hidden hazards of "the biggest advance in car safety since the seatbelt". "The Safety Catch" was alarming but not alarmist, demonstrating with horrible vividness how dangerous airbags can be for some users - anyone, essentially, who is sitting too close to the device when it goes off. This includes children, old people and small adults (who have to pull the seat forward to reach the pedals). In America, passenger side airbags have saved 164 lives but killed 34 children, and people have died in collisions which barely damaged the bodywork of the cars they were in. The solution to this has been known to the industry for years - a smarter airbag which adapts its inflation rate to the speed of travel. But that is more expensive to fit, so it was quietly sidelined. It won't be long, presumably, before we see the first adverts for "non-lethal airbags", but until then, strap your children in the back.