Clive and kicking

There's something iffy about the BBC simply buying programmes ready-made from a rival channel. Whatever the licence fee is for, you suspect it's not meant to be siphoned into big-money transfers. In importing Clive Anderson from Channel 4 after Clive James had already exported himself to ITV, BBC1 has plainly chosen to do unto others as it has had done unto itself. They swiped our Clive: we'll have yours.

So, business as usual for Clive Anderson All Talk (BBC1, Sun). No one would stump up umpteen squillion to play Alan Shearer in the midfield holding role, and the Beeb didn't nab the last surviving chat-show host to front a legal queries phone-in. To make him feel as if he hasn't moved at all, the set has undergone only subtle modifications: a handyman has shifted a couple of planks, maybe changed the odd lightbulb. In one bold innovation, the rancid stand-up routine is now delivered from behind the desk. But the gag about the names of Paula Yates's children was a clear signal that the show plans to make nostalgic expeditions to familiar pastures.

The guest list had a formulaic look about it: as usual, one crackpot and two moneypots trooped on to flog their wares. Madame Vasso's evasions gave Anderson a rare chance to prove that he really did use to be a barrister, a claim we've always had to take on trust. He's actually a lawyer in the same way that Adam Faith is a rock star. Dosh (C4, Thurs), a kind of Money Programme for financial neanderthals, would not have been made if Faith hadn't once had a sexier job. Similarly, Anderson could never sell himself as this dull, bald man-without-qualities if he hadn't been at the Bar in another life.

Except Madame Vasso wasn't playing ball, crystal or otherwise, Fergiegate being, as far as she was concerned, sub judice. And somehow it looks as if a gagging order has been slapped on Anderson, too. Although he was hired as the only chatshow host prepared to be rude without donning the armour-plating of a fictional personality, the BBC can less afford to offend guests than Channel 4. Hence Anderson could be as cruel as he liked to Madame Vasso, who will soon no doubt disappear for good into the hole she crawled out of. But Ben Elton went mysteriously unmugged for using the royal we (cf the Duchess of York's royal me). And Eddie Murphy was never invited to explain, as he would have been at Anderson's old address, why these days his films are so crap.

Equinox (C4, Sun), investigating transport disasters, grippingly argued that some of us are better equipped by biology than others to flee a flaming aircraft or jump a sinking ship. The findings can be pretty accurately transplanted to television. Just how do presenters cope when a vehicle designed for their sole use simply goes up in smoke, or suddenly capsizes? Disaster survivors, it was argued, tend to be both highly extrovert and deeply psychotic. Meaning, roughly translated, that they're nifty at elbowing other people out of the way. As they rushed to save their own lives, some survivors reported going on to autopilot and seeing in tunnel vision, a sensation that autocue readers experience on a daily basis. Look at the way Anderson effortlessly survived the ill-fated Notes and Queries, which sank without trace. One day Clive James, doubtless, will take the Murdoch shilling, and Clive Anderson will transplant his show to ITV: in the light of Equinox's research, he could call it Clive and Kicking.

In National Wonderbra Week, Playtex have been very publicly donating pounds 1 to breast cancer research for every underwired cleavage enhancer sold. Less widely reported is their pocketing of the other pounds 19. That's a big sack of potatoes, as they say in Madame Vasso's house. But Playtex are not clear winners in the bra wars. Her profile boosted by modelling for Gossard, Sophie Anderton has landed a job presenting Desire (C4, Thurs), a mildly irreverent new fashion magazine. It's unclear what qualifications she brings: for a start, she is required to wear clothes, not something she's previously achieved in public before. With her commodities concealed, your vision is diverted to a pair of playful eyebrows that jiggle up and down with clockwork regularity. You can almost hear a producer off-camera exorting her to look animated. Either that, or she's mentally clearing a set of sleeping policemen embedded in the autocue.

Thief Takers (ITV, Thurs) is back with new recruit Amanda Pays. Pays is one of those actors who has somehow ended up famous for no particular reason. Whatever she was known for before, it wasn't for thwacking down doors in the peaked cap of a Met marksperson. Her presence here does nothing to overturn the impression that Thief Takers is a newspaper cartoon strip. As soon as she appeared, you wanted to place a bet on how soon two male colleagues would place a bet on who'd get into her knickers first. (More sleeping policemen. And just as lifelike.) Unfortunately, they'd made their wager so quickly you didn't even have time to get your potatoes out.

Pays will presumably attract the thinking man's vote in next year's National Television Awards. The oddity of this year's awards (ITV, Wed) was that the presenter, Trevor McDonald, also picked up a gong. "And the winner is ... me!" He'd obviously have no trouble crawling from a smoking wreckage. Across the Atlantic, though, they make their oddities bigger and bolder. Vince Gill, who presented the 1996 Country Music Awards (BBC2, Sat), was nominated for seven of them, and won two (the second with Dolly Parton. Who, it was confirmed in the Chancellor's Bournemouth speech, is definitely not a Wonderbra woman.)

The CMAs, incidentally, cleared up the mystery of how come Madame Vasso's potatoless former client is forever flying Concorde to the States. In Nashville, a porky woman with a larval flow of incandescent red hair came on stage and made a lot of noise. Wynonna, a country superstar with muchas patatas, has never been seen in Britain. Could they in some mysterious way be the same person?