Television Review

WHILE Blue Peter Night celebrated the record-breaking longevity of one children's programme, another long-distance runner has had a makeover. Without ever stamping itself on the public consciousness quite so indelibly, Record Breakers has been kicking around for a quarter of a century. The secret of its endurance is in the endlessly renewable source of material: there's always a bigger edifice of champagne flutes to be built, a larger pile of plates to be spun, a longer parade of dominoes to be toppled, a bigger heap of crap to be passed off as a record.

Although eventfulness is sewn into the fabric of the programme, some of it has been unscheduled. For years, Record Breakers was the personal fiefdom of the late Roy Castle, who tap-danced and trumpeted on air and went defiantly bald from the ravages of chemotherapy. Ross McWhirter, one of its regular presenters in the 1970s, was murdered by terrorists. The baton was handed on to the estuarine Cheryl Baker, formerly of Bucks Fizz, who offered dispiriting proof that ripping your skirt off is still the rock on which some careers are built. She was joined by the hurdler Kriss Akabusi, who always looked as if he had taken some form of enthusiasm-enhancing stimulant before the show. Although they have now been sacked, it beats the hell out of other methods of leaving the show.

The irony of Linford's Record Breakers (BBC1) is that its frontman never actually broke a world record. The new format has done away with the live studio audience, and relocated to a moveable outside-broadcast site, at which Linford Christie arrives by helicopter. But there is a kind of folk memory of the original show in the revamp. Just as "Here's one I made earlier" was the phrase in Blue Peter that embodied its can-do spirit, Record Breakers' viewers are still told that "dedication's what you need".

On the evidence of the new show, the mantra may have outlived its relevance. Among the records broken on air this week were the loudest collective scream and the largest custard-pie fight. In which case, a juvenile sense of humour's what you need. There was also a report from the motorised boat which broke the record for circumnavigating the globe. Kate Sanderson, a Newsround presenter who looks like just the bouncy type to break into the evening schedules and start fronting every spare show going, sat in on the Jamaica-Florida run. There wasn't a single interview with anyone on board, so there was no hard evidence to back up my theory that most record-breakers are Brits driven on by the chance to appear on a programme they watched as kids.

You can tell Sanderson is a pro because we saw her chucking up into a bucket, or rather, extravagantly re-enacting the loss of her lunch for the camera. And talking of lunches, there's a new kid presenter who noses around a computer looking for records. This week, it was food records: biggest pie, largest plate of spaghetti etc. My eye was caught by the world's largest lunch, if only because I could have sworn it was meant to read world's largest lunchbox.

It's impossible to take Griff Rhys Jones seriously, which is why he presents Bookworm (BBC2). His cheese-grater voice sends the message that it's perfectly safe to read books, although his thick-rimmed glasses watchfully add that you do have to give them a bit of respect. The show has moved from Sunday afternoon to Friday evening, when television viewers are traditionally encouraged to wind down with comedy or think about which plants to prune in the morning. The implication is that reading fits somewhere in the middle.

There is an unresolved conflict of interest between the programme's two briefs: to recommend books, and to provide good television. Television is what stopped people reading in the first place, because the images do all the hard work for you. Two features - on Stalingrad and the Limerick of Frank McCourt's childhood - were backed up by extraordinary footage. In one case, it had you straining for more. In the other, you felt you probably wouldn't need to read the book now that you'd seen the pictures. And this is why Record Breakers is so remarkable. Although it hardly ever name-drops its print companion, it is probably the most successful book programme of all time.