A chorus of disapproval

TVReview:'Some people like having long waiting lists - it makes them feel powerful," said the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Tim O'Malley, with jaw-dropping naivety and stomach-churning pomposity on Prime Time Investigates, which this week focused its 20-20 vision on the woeful inadequacy of a health system that offers a paltry 13 beds nationwide for children with psychiatric disorders.

Although O'Malley claimed that he "very seldom" receives representations from parents whose children are growing old on cobwebbed waiting lists for mental health assessments, he rattled our cages by stating that once he creaks into action on behalf of a child, they get "seen very quickly".

Beleaguered mothers and fathers, then, of children such as seven-year-old Jordan, who has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, a condition whose incidence has trebled in the last five years) and whose parents have been asking for help since he was two; or of schizophrenic teenagers such as Aron, who have been assigned to adult psychiatric wards; or of those such as Sean who, in the depths of depression and with no recourse to a therapist, took his own life, these families, and many others in similar situations, now know what to do with their petitions in future: put a ribbon around them and stuff them in O'Malley's Christmas stocking.

Eighty beds are coming, apparently (Santa's just finishing them off in his workshop). Somebody get this politician a focus group. With findings from the Health and Safety Executive's principal clinical psychologist, Maeve Martin, which suggest that one in five of our children is suffering a serious psychological disorder, those 80 promised beds are going to be busy.

The programme made grim viewing. Among many harrowing stories was that of Jackie, now adult, who as a depressed and self-harming teenager had been detained in an adult psychiatric ward, where she learned new methods of attempting suicide, including swallowing razor blades and batteries. Jackie, her arms still a complex maze of scarring, described untangling a criss-cross of shoelaces from the throat of a young anorexic friend who had tried, during their incarceration in a Cork mental hospital, to hang herself. Unfortunately, Jackie's experience cannot be consigned to that all-absolving bin marked "pre-Tiger history".

While our mind-bogglingly successful economy totters on its Manolos towards Budget 2007, to embrace the €5 billion surplus we were told about on the news that same night, we might pause to consider these equally astounding figures: every year, 300 children are treated in adult psychiatric facilities; there are 3,000 children on waiting lists for assessment; and a staggering 72 per cent of national school teachers feel their work is compromised by having to deal with serious behavioural problems in the classroom.

Maybe I should be thanking O'Malley - his self-satisfied complacency moved me to hurl a seasonal satsuma at the telly, and I'm always grateful for a bit of exercise.

THE LONDON SYMPHONY Orchestra's Gareth Malone had his own worries, with a bunch of disdainful, gum- chewing teens batting their tongue-studs at him in the first episode of The Choir. Malone, a well-educated, well-enunciated chap with floppy hair, a merrily fraying lambswool V-neck and an unshakeable belief in choral symphonics, had a series of adolescent crises to deal with: his bass section was tone deaf, his altos' voices were breaking and his sopranos were, like, bored . . . duh.

The BBC's latest reality TV series is moving and fascinating entertainment. Although we are all at the end of our aural tether with wall-to-wall talent shows featuring 16-year-olds in cheap spaghetti-strap halternecks demonstrating frighteningly well-developed tremolos and belting out their Mariah Carey impersonations, this is one fly-on-the-dulcet-wall fandango that is really worth watching.

Malone holds the laudable belief that classical music need not be solely the preserve of the middle classes. To spread the word, he persuaded a breezy and rather soulless-looking comprehensive school in the drizzly London suburb of Northolt to allow him form a choir of 25 children from among its alumni. As with all "reality" outings, there has to be a nail-biting, tear-stained carrot at the end of the tortuous TV stick, and in this case it's a trip to China to compete in the Choir Olympics - but only if Malone can get his unharmonious bunch of adolescents to sing from the same hymn-sheet.

Despite their spray-on contempt and hastily manufactured derision, the 25 singing teens from Northolt's dispiriting estates are actually hopeful, anxious and cautiously excited children, many of them with poignant stories to contribute. Two of them, for example, are awaiting news from the immigration authorities as to whether their long-absent and hugely missed father will be allowed to enter Britain from Kenya. Another, meanwhile, who had never listened to western music, had to make the painful transition from Hindu ballads to Disney overtures.

Malone, despite his hauteur, is like a well-modulated pied piper in argyle socks, leading his charges on a musical escape route from a school-world heavy with insoluble difficulties.

There has to be a movie script in here somewhere; doubtless Hugh Grant is already trying on his tank-top.

MEANWHILE, THE CLATTERFORD raffia mafia have had their needles out for three weeks now. The fictitious West Country town is home to a local women's guild bursting at the hand-sewn seams with effervescent TV comediennes. Jam and Jerusalem, penned by Jennifer Saunders and packed full of Sue Johnston, Dawn French, Joanna Lumley and (thankfully) our own Pauline McLynn, among others, is an irritating comedy drama reminiscent of The Vicar of Dibley with a smattering of All Creatures Great and Small on the side. A conservative and rather complacent look at pastoral English life (lofty, vain vicar, twittering verger and lots of countrified eccentrics in muddy Land Rovers), it inevitably makes one speculate whether the once cutting-edge Saunders has recently moved to the counties and swapped her basque for a basset hound.

The Steeleye Span sensibilities of the piece - Cornish pasties, grungy daughter, tweedy pub - will doubtless appeal to those who like their humour as symmetrical and comforting as a Battenberg cake. But, besides one funny line about Sting spoiling Madonna and Guy's party by playing his lute, there were too many polyp and mobility-trike gags and lashings of steaming sentimentality to go with them.

Long live the British eccentric, the series seems to say. We've had them piped through our screens for decades now, so a few more won't make a heap of difference. Unfortunately, though, Joanna Lumley with badly fitting dentures and a tea-cosy on her head, manning the Saturday morning jumble sale, just isn't my cup of tea.

READY TO 'RELISH tradition", sweetie? Up for a "macho spectrum of aromas", are we? Inhaled "the grassy pungency" of cumin lately? Or maybe you'd rather indulge in some "pleasurably absorbing surgery on the ham" when you "strip off its rind". Well, lick my gingerbread, it must be Nigella's Christmas Kitchen!

Nigella is back, chained to her aromatic kitchen by a string of Harrods fairy lights and a new contract with the BBC, flicking her glossy locks over the gravlax salmon and scattering miniature silver balls over her "dark and squishy" finger-licking Yuletide treats. Nigella makes mulled cider ("Oh, my little oranges are bobbing about!"),

Nigella makes boiled Christmas cake ("Flay the fruit - the prunes are like teddy bear noses!"), and who cares if Nigella's recipes for her voluptuous and indulgent west London scene work or not? Her "liquorish intensity" makes for highly entertaining telly.

After all, how many of us will watch the culinary machinations of this doyenne of the well-tongued wooden spoon purely for tips on how to stuff a bird and crackle a gammon? Let's face it, this curvy girl (who famously said something about not having lived until you'd swallowed the aborted foetus of a deer, or something equally endearing) is simply a great camp seasonal trinket to hang on our telly trees. Bring it on, Nigella, with your husky cardamom and your shards of barky cinnamon - despite your cosy schmoozing with the sycophantic camera, it's kind of nice to see a girl eat every now and again.