I've become a waste avenger

THIS week sees the launch of the commendable Recycle Now campaign. The heartening news is that our recycling rates have risen from 17 per cent to an impressive 34 per cent in the past five years; not enough but getting better every day. As one who has been brought up in the make-do-and-mend school, I am pleased to be part of the push to get people to think more about what need not be chucked away.

My mother used to re-use clingfilm, for pity's sake. Now every cupboard in our house is crammed with useful pots and bags. An empty jam jar with a lid becomes a travelling ashtray. Used baked bean tins with the label removed make chic watertight vases.

I wish we had a more daring attitude to waste matter, particularly cellophane and plastic. I can imagine it incorporated into subterranean scaffolding for houses built on flood planes. It won't biodegrade, is impervious to water, and could be incorporated into pre-stressed concrete. And I would love to see our mountains of waste paper turned into fuel-soaked briquettes so we could have fires again in our grates; warmth and light at the touch of a match.

All the ships that bring goods from China return filled with plastic bottles and waste paper so that it can be re-processed there. Surely we can do better than that. I have always dreamed of bio-degradable wrapping for fruit and vegetables, made from leaves into boxes and cartons. Left out in the rain they would revert to useful mulch, benefiting urban gardens and enriching the countryside. Job done.

* What do you pack to watch through the night to spot jaguars in Mexico? Lots of green and khaki cotton long-sleeved shirts and trousers and not much else. Not sunglasses, because it will be pitch black; not a camera, because the film unit will be recording the sighting.

But what if they don't appear? Our two-part documentary for ITV on cats, Catwoman (screening in September) has been lucky so far, what with cheetahs and rescue cats and witches with their familiars, but next week we are depending on the shy jaguar to bring a touch of secret glamour to the show.

* On Friday night French and Saunders performed what was billed as their "poignant last sketch together". Poignant would not be the word I would have chosen for this ruthless remake of Mamma Mia!

Dressed in baggy blue dungarees with a wisp of hair dangling over one eye, Jennifer morphed eerily into Meryl Streep; Dawn somehow emerged as a dead ringer for Julie Walters - as Spitting Image might have seen her.

We want these funny people to be there for ever for us: we just want to sit at home and laugh until we're sick. Please don't let them go away for ever.