PETER KAY

Two stories dominated the news on television all week. One was tragic but uplifting; the other, essentially tawdry and dispiriting. Omagh is what television news does best: the Monica Lewinsky affair opens a vista of what television news could become if all goes wrong. Then, on Thursday, the news of America's revenge for the bombing of the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam embassies. A coup de theatre: no wonder they say Bill Clinton is going to join Steven Spielberg on the board of Dream Works when he's through with the White House.

CONTEMPLATING AMERICA this week has been like watching a gigantic edition of The Jerry Springer Show. But instead of the usual procession of dysfunctional representatives of the US underclass, falling over their own blubber and ponytails in an attempt to knock five kinds of theatrical crap out of each other, we have - up on stage (a big hand folks!) - Bill, Monica, Ken Starr, Hillary, Linda Tripp and as many others as can be conceivably subpoenaed.

All the spin doctors, legal counsels, advisors and voice trainers can't hide the fact of faking it

BRITISH Sky Broadcasting, the satellite television group, has dealt another blow to its rivals by signing up two more channels to its digital service on an exclusive basis for several years.

BROADCASTERS HAVE fallen foul of television watchdogs for screening fight-filled episodes of the cult Jerry Springer Show during the day when children might be watching.

TOP FILMS

The poet and critic Randall Jarrell once wrote an essay about the raw confessional verse that he had to assess as part of his job on a New England campus. It was, he recalled, like facing an array of hacked- off limbs - bloody chunks of pain that the owners offered up for judgement. In those conditions, a grade of "fail" would have added heartless insult to mortal injury.

1 Jerry Springer - Too Hot For TV

1 Spiceworld - The Movie

In his Perrier-nominated Edinburgh stand-up show last summer, Graham Norton extracted great comic mileage from a "Kitty Phone", a kitten-shaped telephone for which you could obtain a certificate of adoption. In his new Channel 4 vehicle, So Graham Norton, he has similar fun at the expense of Sainsbury's range of World Cup products.

Addictive television

Electronic demagogues

WARMONGERS are people too, you know. They get old and they draw their pensions - and most generous ones, most likely, after a lifetime's service to whichever state it was they served. No longer caught up in the crises which once absorbed their every moment, they are able to remember what they did to help make history, and what they thought they were doing when they took it in the direction they did. If only someone asked them, we really would learn something new.