TELEVISION / BRIEFING: Motorway madness

Organisers being spied upon by private detectives, their phones tapped and their protests broken up by hired muscle - it could be the miners' strike of 1984 rather than a campaign to save a beautiful patch of solidly Conservative Hampshire. DISPATCHES (9pm C4) details the alleged dirty tricks resorted to by the Department of Transport in its determination to bulldoze the M3 motorway through Twyford Down. Hampshire Police have apparently supplied the DoT with the names of law-abiding Twyford supporters, helping the department in its civil action against the protesters, while the private security firm hired by the Government was as good as encouraged - by the DoT's hands-off attitude - to use force in breaking up peaceful on- site protests ('You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs,' says local MP Chris Chope). Meanwhile an unlikely alliance has grown up between conservationists, Nimbys and a New Age tribe called the Dongas.

THE BRIT AWARDS (8.30pm ITV), the record industry's annual back slap-athon, is traditionally enlivened by more cock- ups than Beadle's About. This year finds the industry in a recessionary mood as it chooses which of its big earners - including Shakespears Sister, Right Said Fred, Annie Lennox, Tasmin Archer and Simply Red - to reward.

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