Sport on TV: Boy wonder slides easily into big brother mode

THE IDEA of Michael Owen's Soccer Skills (BBC2) was fine, but the timing could have been better. It should have been a feel-good 30 minutes, a chance to learn and enjoy as one of the best young footballers in the world persuaded an eager gang of kids that if they worked hard and did their best, then one day they might be like him. But unfortunately, it started its run just 48 hours after England's debacle in Warsaw, and the wounds were so fresh that it was impossible to watch without a weary, cynical sneer on your lips.

Owen himself, of course, has no case to answer at the inquest into possibly the most spineless and depressing England performance since, well, since the last one. When Andy Capp's team captain asked him to be a substitute, he refused on the grounds that "they're just people they bring on at the end to share the blame", but Owen, introduced late on after playing about 60 seconds of serious football in the last six months, did as much as anyone could have expected. Yet even so, the most innocuous of comments as he put his students through their paces suddenly took on a darker meaning.

Warm-ups, for instance, were important according to Owen because "by the time the whistle goes, we are all prepared both mentally and physically". Oh yeah? Not on Wednesday they weren't. Then, a few minutes later, Owen demonstrated the basics of passing the ball, and his tiny proteges were soon stroking it around like seasoned pros. It seemed a pity, then, that he could not have done the same for McManaman and Shearer before they walked out in Warsaw.

The only cause for optimism in all this was Owen himself. He seems truly unaffected by all the fame, attention and money, and is surely not doing the series because he needs the cash. He was even prepared to play the understanding older brother when wee Kieran Browne, 11, was worried that his chronic lack of height might count against him with the scouts from his beloved Leeds United.

"I was about your height when I started," Owen told him. "Were yer?" Kieran stammered, unable to believe that he was having a one-to-one with Michael Owen. "Yeah, I think it's good to be small when you start because when you're playing against bigger players you've got to make sure you're better than them in different ways, use some skill or whatever.

"Then in a few years you'll grow and you'll be the same size as them and you'll have the skill and they won't be stronger than you any more so you'll have the advantage. See?" As wee Kieran trotted away, I swear he was two inches taller.

For as long as England have Owen, they will have hope. It will be a long time, though, before they can afford to leave a player of his quality out of the side entirely and still end up winning the World Cup. But that is the happy position in which the French find themselves, as David Ginola: Up Close And Personal (C5) reminded us.

What up close and personal seemed to mean as far as Channel 5 were concerned were plenty of shots of Ginola in swimming trunks, in which his torso looked like flesh-coloured body armour. Basically, it told you what you already knew: that Ginola is quite probably the luckiest man alive. He not only looks like a god, he plays football like one too (although, to be fair to the gods, the gospels do not mention Jesus Christ being booked for persistent diving during the big Jerusalem derby).

But there were some revealing moments too, not least when he tried to play a delicate chip from just off the green at Stoke Poges Golf Club. He scuffed it, and the ball rolled back to his feet. He tried again. Same result. All over the country, flabby, talentless men did a delirious lap of the living-room. They had found something that Ginola was useless at.

Normal people with normal lives are probably unaware that Call My Bluff (BBC1), a relic of the 1970s, now goes out five lunchtimes a week, with Bob Holness taking the place of Robert Robinson as the dinger of the irritating little bell. The daily slot inevitably means that worthwhile guests are at a premium, which may explain why Tony Banks turned up this week.

Anyone who recalls Banks's delight when Joao Havelange declared England's World Cup bid to be his "personal choice", only for him to then say exactly the same thing to both the Germans and South Africans, will appreciate that Banks was never going to be a Call My Bluff natural.

And indeed, when the time came, he could still not tell when someone was spinning him a line. But in one sense at least, Banks's performance was an improvement on his spell as Minister for Sport. After all, he was only spouting nonsense two-thirds of the time.