Taking the Michael

I turned on the TV and instead of the usual Antiques Roadshow (BBC1, 6.30pm) malarkey there was a couple of the show's experts, namely David stroke-my-'tache' Battie and Paul Atterbury, talking in reverent tones about how much they were going to miss Michael, and what a great guy he'd been to work with, and how they had so many happy memories of the shows they'd done with him.

Next came a montage of clips of the great man himself in full-on Antiques action: gurning in period millinery, wielding bellows in a suggestive manner, schmoozing ladies with cauliflower hairdos, feigning terror at a barking hand-puppet, that sort of thing.

A quick check of the listings and my worst fear was confirmed. This week's episode wasn't just called Antiques Roadshow, it had been re-named Antiques Roadshow - Farewell Michael.

So, I assumed that the silver-tongued, silver-coiffed Harrison Ford of the antiques world had finally gone under the gavel and was now fingering objets d'art in some great auction room in the sky.

But no, I'd got the wrong end of the scrimshaw stick.

Suddenly there he was, large-as-life, and with a twinkle (or was that a tear?) in his eye, handing an imaginary, filigree and cloisonné-decorated baton from the early 19th century over to the impossibly elegant if crazily eye-browed Fiona Bruce, who is to become Aspel's successor now that he's retiring from the show after eight years.

Ah, now it all makes sense. But wait, eight years? Is that all? Surely he's been presenting it for decades and by the tone of this elaborate, royalty-style send-off, you'd think he had been.

I could swear that when I watched it years ago, Michael was running the show, which has been a subconscious part of my Sundays for years.

I'm not what you'd call a fan, in fact, I rarely watch it, but it's always been there in the background and even the tune is built in to my psyche.

Whenever I hear it, I feel reassured.

I know that Michael will be smiling benevolently out from the screen, informing us that this week they are in Tunbridge Wells. I know that there will be a line of people queuing like quiet tramps with their prized possessions wrapped in old newspapers hoping their value will pay for a holiday flat in Benidorm. More importantly, I know the weekend has come to an end without mishap and soon we will be heading back to school or work.

So it was all a false alarm then. The show will go on in the safe hands of Fiona and Michael is alive.

Mind you, I bet he knows exactly what his obituary show is going to be like!

That Poppy Shakespeare (Monday, C4, 9pm) was a laugh, wasn't it?

Mental illness is incredibly common, we're all touched by it in one way or another and maybe we all have a bit of it in us, truth be told.

Listen, some of my best friends are mad, or dribblers as the clients' at the care centre called them in Poppy Shakespeare, and no doubt, so are some of yours, so why does being a bit mental always have to be portrayed as an endlessly bleak and depressing thing?

And, believe me, this was bleaker than sitting on a windswept moor in January, at five in the morning, in the driving rain, with no coat and Leonard Cohen serenading you. I tried very hard to love this film. It had been praised to the heavens in advance of being aired and I think Anna Maxwell Martin, who starred as N, is one of the best and coolest actresses around.

But it was just too relentlessly grim. Where was the humour so often used in real life to make the situations portrayed more bearable?

Where were the fascinating characters you come across in the sorts of group sessions featured?

Where were the genuinely good health professionals? For there are some, not that you'd guess from this.

And where, for that matter was the flipping soap? Because if this show is anything to go by all people who are mentally ill not only lose control of their faculties, but also the ability to use soap and to clean their house.

And speaking of soap, I've saved some to wash out your mouth Miss Maxwell Martin, for your effing and blinding was most unbecoming of a young lady who maintained such dignity and decorum playing the fabulous Miss Esther Summerson.

From Bleak House to just plain bleak.

PS: Not content with ramming a huge serving of stealth product placement down our throats, this week Delia Smith tried to force-feed us her agent of all things, who, she gushed, she loved and admired more than anyone else outside her own family.

Next week, we meet Delia's accountant, who she no doubt loves even more than her favourite Aunt Bessie...