Going soft, and not just in the head

ANOTHER live excursion into the world of psychic powers, Beyond Belief (ITV) was unerringly dull. The main feature was Uri Geller, excessively ebullient in a hideous blue and orange T-shirt with his name on it. He kept pointing at the camera, rather rudely I felt. "Uri has so much electronic, kinetic or some other sort of energy ... " explained David Frost helpfully, starting to point a bit himself. "Everybody, put your spoons on the TV set," said Uri. With quite a lot of hands- on effort, Uri managed to bend a spoon in the studio. "One of the few occasions when the phrase 'It's getting softer' is good news," quipped David rather wittily. Any other humour seemed quite unintentional.

A healer, Matthew Manning (this man has really got something, and should have his own show), was brought on to heal a jittery woman who'd had no sense of smell for 40 years. A miracle was performed: but only with regard to terrible pongs. He also said that last time he'd done the show, people watching it at home had received "healing benefit" (housing benefit might have been handier). This usually takes the form of a sensation of heat. I tried to be cured. I was waiting for warmth but instead came over all cold. Was this paranormal, or post-prandial?

There was Oron from Israel who can read his father's mind (not a habit to be encouraged, you'd think). His father seemed unpleasantly pushy, like Mozart's but to less purpose. Their act could easily be a trick, and involved a lot of green boxes. Oron successfully guessed their contents. I thought it would never end. Uri was more excited about a guy on a bicycle, who was planning to beat the world speed record with the help of psychic energy. Uri seemed to have the words "psychic" and "cycle" mixed up. At any rate, he got us all shouting, "Go, Bruce! Go, Bruce!" for nothing - the speedometer failed, and the psychic experiment had to be abandoned. Bruce was wearing impenetrable blue shades, so we were spared his disappointment.

Then there was a Pole who'd discovered, while staying in a German refugee camp, that he could stick pots and plates to himself - magnetically. He looked pretty funny with a pot stuck to his forehead (at one point, he had two pots like breasts on his chest), but not paranormally so. "Miroslav, that's all we've got time for," said David, but Miroslav couldn't be prevented from slapping on another plate. In fact, all the phenomena seemed too idiotic to be weird.

"Remember now the happy times,

The family ties we shared.

Don't leave my resting-place unmarked

As though you never cared."

This is the hard-sell brochure style of Chichester Crematorium, which belongs to an American company with hopes of promoting the American way of death over here. Which is to encourage relatives to absolve their guilt by coughing up money - "You've got to get 'em before the tears are dry." Public Eye (BBC2) presented a scary story of witless Brits exposed to foreign funerary techniques. Soon we'll all be buying pounds 30,000 "caskets" with comfy interiors (TV and mini-bar) - a treat for future archaeologists.

Damn foreigners! Island of Dreams (C4), an intrinsically racist programme which examined Greek family life, particularly husbands, from the point of view of British women, completed its rounds this week. "They're not bad people. You just have to accept them for what they are," generalised one dispirited lass. Another kept wanting to go home to Lincoln, of all places. Dia, continually battling against Greek con- ventions, at first refused to name her daughter after her mother-in-law, which caused great dismay. "I married Nico, not his mother," she kept saying. But in Greece, you take on the whole family. She finally named the kid Sophia, as ordered, and the power struggle took some new form. It was never very clear that the British were welcome in the first place. One sign, in English, said: "Please don't go down to the beach at night. It disturbs the turtles."

Mary's getting prettier every decade in Our Friends in the North (BBC2). And now that she's got a Filofax, she's even more self-possessed. Her lipstick and general ripeness for love quite overshadowed the impact of the miners' strike this week. She and Nicky have at last checked out his Baton Rouge, a long-awaited event - in fact they flirted for 20 years, which must be a world record. What brought this on? Well, not only have they both evolved into incorrigible goody-goodies, but Nicky got clobbered by the police. The sight of his sore head stirs Mary - "If not now, then when?" she asked. I'd have thought any other time might have been preferable, but it turns out he's perfectly capable of indulging in a strenuous sex act. After saving a few miners, they even decide to get married. Who says the personal ain't political? Cut to Mary's right breast, carefully silhouetted against a lamp.

At last! Some programmes about Men. What? I thought most television was about men. Well these are too ... but more so. BBC2's Trouble With Men season has concentrated on men's health. While women have developed into gynaecology bores, men have tried to remain in ignorance about their own bodies. So it was sad to see them in The Men's Ward, in their open gowns and white stockings, facing up to things. "It's just like a prison," said one. Hospital did seem the place where men finally get punished for being men. Never mind impotence, this was complete powerlessness - waiting all day for nasty operations that never happen, chomping through dismal dinners, being worryingly pitied by their wives. And everything an embarrassment. Men are lonely and silent as animals when they're really sick. But at least they slept well, all snoring away contentedly when illuminated by the night nurse's torch.

The penis is a very unreliable contraption, but impotent men on No Hard Feelings were offered even more dubious solutions: a vacuum pump that sucks it into shape, prostaglandin injected directly into it, or penile implants. All the wives said they don't really mind if their husband's penises never get going again. True love. Another show, Forever Young, considered the bene- fits and drawbacks of topping up testosterone levels - increased libido v baldness. The curious thing here was that they kept showing us a huge yam, lying on its side. It made a change from all those classical statues (the only way BBC2 dares show a penis), but I never understood what the yam had to do with testosterone, and now I probably never will.

Why Men Die Younger was an awkward blend of pseudo-science and prejudice, mainly against mothers (as usual). Not only do women live longer than men, they can be blamed for indoctrinating them with all sorts of anti- social, and sometimes fatal behaviour. For men, it was claimed, are programmed from birth to take too many risks, and to show off in order to find a mate. Their displays of strength and aggression will, of course, destroy us all in the end. So far, the male conviction that might is right has brought us the atom bomb, the Newbury by-pass and oil tankers off Lundy Island. Boys with their toys.

In Women on Men, Jenny Eclair was delightfully brutal. She says she gets her callousness from her mother, who "used to resent having to go up once a day with a tray of soup and Jacob's Cream Crackers" when her father had one of his migraines or bouts of malaria. "They go all sort of nursery, a bit sucky-thumby, and want mothering. But mothering with a bit of sex thrown in." When her own husband broke his foot - on a tiny wall - Eclair left home for a week in disgust. To visit her mother.