small screen

People say we're monking around

You've bought the album so why not buy the video (and perhaps even a habit to match)? Canto Gregoriano - The Video (£9.99 Picture Music International) comes hot on the heels of best-selling platinum album Canto Gregoriano - and takes tacky sentimentality to untold heights. Gregorian chants are hypnotic in their beauty and hardly need visual backup, but that's exactly what they get here - a string of corny clichs with shafts of sunlight breaking through fluffy white clouds, crashing waves surfers would kill for and psychedelic fish mooching on the ocean bed. You also get a glimpse backstage as the monks do the business (right) - a far cry from The Name of the Rose, which is a relief - with informative chat about the chants' history. Still, these merry monks might do better to let the chants speak for themselves - but then again, Songs of Praise doesn't do too badly.

A bulletin the head

Another month flies past, and another slew of mad people complain to the Broadcasting Standards Council about offensive items unstoppably leaking from their radio or television set. That careless genius, Chris Morris, comes in for another lukewarm slapping, for an item on his Radio 1FM show last November. Someone complained about the use of the word "twat" in reference to the female anatomy. The BBC said that the term "had been used in a factual, not abusive, context." But the Complaints Committee decided that even so, "the word `twat' still retained its power to offend." Complaint upheld. Quite surprising, then, to flick forward a couple of pages in the bulletin and find a complaint about the children's programme Wolf It. A "highly offensive" word was used. Can you guess what it is yet? Yes, it's our old friend "twat"! But hang on, it was pronounced "twot", and used "to denote a fool". The BSC thought that "pronounced in this way and used in a comic sense within the context of a children's programme, the word was not inappropriate nor likely to have caused widespread offence." Complaint dismissed. Extraordinary: the word's powerfully offensive one minute, then you change the vowel sound, turn it into a term of personal abuse, and you can scream it at little, cowering, defenceless kiddies to your heart's content? Rubbish. Now, a short nutters' compendium... Sixteen viewers were shocked by Basic Instinct (starring Sharon Stone, right). Such cretins would peer quizzically at a movie called This Film Is Chocka With Sex, Violence and Bad Language until they got offended... Someone complained of "a preoccupation with the physical appearance of the cast" in Baywatch (but, like, they are beautiful, man)... Watching the children's programme Wizadora, a viewer complained that it was "irresponsible to show a trainee wizard entangled in wool to impressionable young viewers"... Complainants are now protected by anonymity, so sadly we can't ridicule them personally. But you know who you are...

Sharpe shooting

Being a dashing, daring pin-up is obviously taking its toll on "heart- throb" Sean Bean (right). In the press release for the latest series of Sharpe (Wed 8pm ITV), it seems that the Sheffield swashbuckler is swiftly swapping reality for fantasy: "It must be every man's dream to lead a troop of men against the French, or to storm a huge fort," Sean throbs, talking about his alter ego Richard Sharpe. Personally, I must confess that these two bizarre fantasies wouldn't make my top 100, but then again I'm not pinned up on lockers all over Britain. However, living in a fantasy world is evidently becoming a bit of a habit for Mr Bean, his two other current projects being 006 (oh oh dear) in the new Bond movie Goldeneye, and playing Jimmy Muir, footballer for Sheffield United, in When Saturday Comes. Scoring shouldn't be a problem for Bean in the new Sharpe, with a fresh woman for each Boy's Own episode, but the other two fantasy outings look ominously like own goals.

Compiled by Kate Mikhail, Steven Poole and Dominic Earle