LAST NIGHT

Now she's getting the land mines problem sorted out, perhaps Diana, Princess of Wales will be open to suggestions for a new mercy mission. Airport (BBC1), which followed her success in sneaking quietly out of Heathrow at dawn, offered a possibility. Couldn't the princess put herself forward to smuggle a few spliffs in for the rest of us, who can't keep an innocent look on our faces going through customs? In the old days, the trick was to nab a nun on the runway to carry through that extra bottle of whisky, but, sadly, they don't do dope. This documentary, however, clearly identified an alternative source of help - whereas those fresh from a weekend's weed in Amsterdam can expect a full search, the glitterati are hurriedly limoed away in a puff of smoke.

We started with Di, slipping away minutes after arrival with God knows how many land mines hidden among the duty frees. Hours later, Pamela Anderson jetted in on a "Pam's Pizzas" advertising tour. Four bodyguards, five publicists and seven airport personnel, co-ordinated by a Julie Walters lookalike, separated prey from press and eased her out of the airport within 13 minutes of landing. Not a customs officer in sight to check Pammy's quattro formaggios.

They were more interested in giving "rub downs" to cannabis tourists, who had naively secreted mementos of their Dutch visits about themselves. For Garth and Liz, customs officers, it was like taking sweets off children. Steve swore that he had cleared his pockets before leaving Amsterdam. "You didn't do a very good job," sniggered Garth peering into a small package. What was this in Steve's socks? And his shoes seemed to rattle a bit too. "It's certainly mounting up," quipped Garth.

But these were the nice sort of customs officers. Steve and the others got off with a fine - all more the surprising given Steve's audacity in asking for his grass back. In this jolly version of Heathrow, you could imagine Garth taking a sip from your bottle of Lourdes holy water, coughing on the vodka and then packing you off with a gentle reprimand, when you declared in amazement: "A miracle". Dream on. Somehow, all this didn't quite ring true. One couldn't help thinking that once the cameras went away, Garth and Liz might get quite nasty. My advice to Amsterdam weekenders is: either go with Di or dress up as a nun.

Hunting Bobby Oatway (C4) dealt with a different reason for wishing to travel incognito. The subject was a 50-year old "baby raper", out on parole in Canada after serving 10 years of a 13-year sentence for sexually abusing his wife's three younger sisters. The sisters, now grown up, have sworn to warn of his presence wherever he ventures, and they had plastered the locality with his details. The programme was about a Toronto community's efforts to remove Oatway from a local halfway house, and the parole service's paralysis in dealing with their concerns.

The details of Oatway's paedophilic crimes were harrowing and the programme inevitably raised the question of what should be done if one cannot execute or castrate such men, or lock them up for life. But that debate was not helped by turning him into a monster. A sinister soundtrack, with heavy- breathing worthy of The Silence of the Lambs, played over lingering, brooding shots of Oatway. His childhood speech impediment, which meant subtitles were required, made him seem even more weird but was left unexplained until well into the film. We learned little about the success or failure of his treatment. That said, you would need strong religious faith to be satisfied with Oatway's promise to "do everything in my power to ask God and pray it won't happen again".

The neighbourhood's protests solved the short-term problem: Oatway was given an escort wherever he went, and, in the face of hostility, asked to return to prison until his sentence ended. Yet no options beyond public harassment were offered for ensuring that all convicted sex offenders are closely monitored once they are no longer on parole. That, surely, must be the future.