A-VOID THE 'REALITY' DREGS

I KNOW just how Rose Tyler feels, after the weekend's viewing made me feel like I was in a parallel universe, too.

The media rumour mill was busy suggesting that Billie Piper's character was about to be killed in the final episode of the latest Doctor Who series (BBC1, Saturday). As it turned out, she merely crossed the Void to go on living a parallel existence.

The denouement of the Tyler family storyline - with father Pete having made a success of himself in the other universe - became a bit more complicated than a body ought to have to deal with at teatime on a Saturday night. By the time the family was reunited - along with Rose's erstwhile boyfriend Mickey - the Void had also swallowed my powers of deduction.

The mood was momentarily lightened at the sight of 'millions' of Daleks flying through the air and being ejected from our world, like spinning thimbles sucked out of a hole in a plane.

The Cybermen didn't fare much better, once David Tennant's Doctor stopped gurning and got on with the job at hand.

And so we left the Time Lord wiping a tear from his eye, having lost his young blonde travelling companion, only to be confronted by Catherine Tate in a wedding dress looking less than happy to find herself on the Tardis. Did she look bothered?

Talking of parallel universes, please tell me that I was mistaken when I thought I had been watching a new 'reality' show, featuring minor 'celebrities' show jumping.

Under the ruse of raising cash for Sport Relief, the Beeb has surely inflicted the worst excuse for a contest ever upon us by airing Only Fools On Horses. How could such a wonderful title garnish such a load of old fetlocks?

Quite apart from the fact that experience should have told those in charge that Ruby Wax should never be let loose on an audience again, the transatlantic bigmouth took centre stage during the brief time she survived. It didn't help that she was surrounded by 'wishy washy' types such as Nicki Chapman, Paul Nicholas and some ringer from Blue Peter, who must have won a gymkhana or two in a previous life.

With Ms Lite herself, Kirsty Gallacher, co-hosting the show, chief presenter and ringmaster Angus Deayton's usual sardonic delivery seemed strangely out of place in such an amateurish format. Given a completely free rein, he would surely have ripped the thing to shreds from the outset!

A procession of visibly bored horses hopped over miniscule fences, bearing riders with expressions suggesting they were about to jump the Grand Canyon (as seen in hysterically funny shots from cameras mounted between the horses' ears).

As if this wasn't enough, ITV1 decided to take us back to Love Island for a new series on Monday night.

Within minutes Sophie Anderton had decided she was going to go for the sympathy vote with a copious outpouring of crocodile tears.

Here we go again, I thought, and promptly switched off. If anyone deserves to be sucked across the Void into a parallel universe, it's a woman who finds something to cry about when being paid a vast amount of cash to go on holiday to Fiji!