The Critics: Television: A truly alternative stand-up

Royal wedding commentators are traditionally very fond of organs. Tom Fleming, who by my reckoning has covered every royal wedding since Victoria wed Albert - yet disappointingly was not called upon by the BBC for yesterday's big match - used to get tremendous value out of organs. "This great organ was made in 1792 by Cornelius Krijksjaart the Younger of Rotterdam," he would murmur, in the belief that knowledge of the instrument's provenance would fill a hole in our lives.

Stanley, from Llandudno, has a great organ made in 1998 by Christine Evans of North Wales. I defend this play on the word "organ" on the grounds that Channel 5 seemed to think it irresistibly witty and original, cutting from Stanley playing the electric you-know-what, to Stanley having a pair of silicon rods inserted into his penis. This was Impotence, a four- part series. The first programme was brazenly subtitled "The Dick Doctor", a reference to Evans, a hearty urologist specialising in male impotence.

Evans is what is affectionately known as a Great British Eccentric. You might even say that when they made her, they threw away the mould (having first used it to make Fanny Cradock, Barbara Woodhouse, Sister Wendy and the Two Fat Ladies). The Two Fat Ladies travel by motorbike, Evans smokes cigars. Television, though it prides itself on being progressive, still has a drearily conventional notion of a line separating male and female behaviour. Cross it and you have a star - perhaps even a series.

To be fair to Channel 5, Evans is a genuine find, and by cracking jokes while treating men for impotence has discovered a truly alternative stand- up comedy. With the elderly, she first makes certain they really want the treatment. "Most men of 74 are hanging their boots up. They say they've had a good innings," she told one would-be patient. Sport has always been a handy metaphor for sex. Trouble was, this septuagenarian still wanted to score.

As for Stanley, he has been a patient of Christine Evans's for six years, ever since cancer treatment left him impotent. He was understandably keen to resume intercourse with his wife of 50-odd years, Ella, but unable to take Viagra because of angina. Eventually he opted for a prosthetic penis. In the modern fashion, we not only accompanied him to the operating theatre but were ushered into the front row of the stalls. From this distressingly clear vantage point, we saw the top of his penis lopped off and a rod inserted: an excruciating sight that I fear may have affected me like one of Pavlov's dogs. I might never again be able to watch my young son, partial to boiled eggs for breakfast, slicing the top off and thrusting a toast soldier inside. Not without clutching my genitals and emitting a long wail, in which case I will definitely sue.

The operation, thankfully, was a success, leaving Stanley with a permanently erect phallus which, like a pipecleaner, can be folded for easy storage. To his credit, Stanley thought the whole business hilarious. "I'd love to see the undertaker's face when they put me in the box and see my penis standing up," he said. "They'll say `Christ, he's not dead'." But that vindictive bitch Mother Nature, perhaps indignant at having her handiwork tampered with, saw to it that Stanley's wife went first. As the credits rolled, we were told Ella had died a month after filming ended. I very nearly wept.

Penises loomed large on television last week. In For Better for Worse (ITV), a Liverpudlian called Russell looked into having his vasectomy reversed. Russell married Linda, formerly his 16-year-old babysitter. Linda wants children, but is also keen on reptiles. They went to the Knotty Ash Medical Centre, where the Asian doctor - a sombre chap - resisted the obvious crack about Russell's diddyman. Instead, he said they would have to wait years for a vasectomy reversal on the NHS: done privately, it would cost pounds 3,000. So that was that. "You'd better have that iguana," said Russell, comfortingly. For Better for Worse has its moments. It is supposedly a docu-soap about weddings and newly-weds, but veers off enthusiastically when something more exciting catches its eye. For a while, Friday's distended - sorry, extended - programme got itself confused with Driving School, as Russell ranted at Linda for her clutch control. Presumably, we were treated to this in honour of the royal wedding. Sometimes, the inventiveness of schedulers leaves me speechless with admiration.

Over on BBC1 they are almost as clever, fixing the documentary series Royal Wedding Bells to reach conclusion just as excitement about Edward and Sophie's nuptials reached fever pitch - a condition when seven people in every 1,000 refer to a topic once every other day. Forgive the scepticism, but Royal Wedding Bells demonstrated why the nation was so underwhelmed. It is humiliating to be reminded how much bunting we bought to celebrate the disastrous marriages of Anne, Charles and Andrew.

Royal Wedding Bells, however, steadfastly and rather impressively ignored the royal divorces. Why let an irksome detail get in the way of some wholesome reminscences, like the one about Diana leading her bridesmaids in a happy chorus of "Just One Cornetto"? Within a few years, she was so ill and unhappy that she was throwing up after Just One Cornetto, rather souring the anecdote. But Royal Wedding Bells - a series so reverential and old- fashioned that Sir Alastair Burnet should have been brought out of retirement to present it - held tight to its brief.

In one of the more scintillating reminiscences, Princess Anne's hairdresser recalled that the well-known peer alongside her during the service was wearing bright red socks. And just when you thought that the material couldn't get any more fascinating, up popped a choirmaster to reveal that his choristers kept nudging each other when they spotted famous people such as Nancy Reagan. "You know what boys are," he said. Indeed.

"Life, death, pain, sex, brutality, bleakness, writhing, squirming, staggering on, grimly..." Now there's a decent assessment of a royal marriage, but in fact it was Matthew Collings, talking about the work of Francis Bacon, on This Is Modern Art (C4). Modern art itself, said Collings, equals "mad, psycho, nutty, grisly grimness". Actually, the most modern artist I have any time for is Canaletto, and I have never remotely understood the point of Gilbert and George - "the Morecambe and Wise of existentialism" - so this series is probably not for me. Nevertheless, I can appreciate and savour tongue-in-cheek intellectual claptrap when I hear it, and am delighted to find Channel 4 being true to its remit.

Last Sunday, This Is Modern Art comprised the second half of a fascinating double-header, which commenced with The Real Jonathan Aitken. This was a cracking account of the almost operatic downfall of the former minister for arms procurement, with some unwittingly hilarious contributions from his Etonian friends, one of whom recalled Aitken taking up "with a lady of easy virtue ... I actually met her, a number of us were rather jealous ... we thought she looked perfectly normal and rather nice; you could have fooled us that she was Miss Whiplash behind the scenes".

So much for an Eton education. And how interesting that Aitken, who made such tactical use of the male organ, should himself be screwed by the Guardian, an organ of an altogether different sort.