Bring out the best in baby

What more noble calling could any scientist aspire to than to spend his days dousing chimpanzees in aftershave lotion, or growing human ears on the backs of mice, and as for manufacturing cats' eyes for the middle of roads, why go to all that trouble and waste all that glass? Simply embed real unwanted stray cats into the Tarmac and, hey presto, you've solved two problems at once.

If only the Government would give me a licence to market my coma-in-a-can aerosol spray ("now with added chloroform"), I could also solve the problem of how to silence small yet irritating children. But in the meantime parents with disruptive and raucous toddlers will have to make do with watching the human soporific that is Tracy Hogg, as she reveals her infant-pacifying techniques in The Baby Whisperer (Discovery Health).

According to the advance publicity for the series, Yorkshire-born Tracy perfected her infant-handling skills during a 14-year stint as a celebrity nanny in Hollywood (which seems plausible enough, because that town has always been full of spoiled, brattish, tantrum-throwing cry-babies for her to practise on), and has now returned to the UK to show British parents how child-raising should be done.

There obviously must be something in her methods, because long before the end of last night's enervating and charisma-free debut edition, she'd already lulled this TV critic into a deep and satisfying sleep.

Tracy's challenge last night was an 18-month-old ball of pent-up fury called Dexter, who had developed a nasty habit of head-butting anything or anyone around him whenever he couldn't get his own way (a condition known north of the border as Sauchiehall Street Syndrome).

"This is a temper tantrum," declared the Baby Whisperer as her infant charge set about demolishing yet another item of furniture, even giving himself a nose bleed as he angrily pummelled a bean bag, and turned it into a been bag.

"He needs clear boundaries," was Tracy's verdict, after she'd spent two hours with the mother trying unsuccessfully to get a single piece of pasta down Dexter's throat, and you could tell from the distraught look in the parents' eyes that they were reaching much the same conclusion about their particular child that I reached about kids in general, some years ago.

That small children are nothing more than noisy, pesky little people who won't share the chores and don't pay rent.

Watching Mrs Hogg at work, it was clear she has the same instinctive and unspoken rapport with babies that the late Barbara Woodhouse had with animals. But, sadly, she totally lacked Woodhouse's equally acute understanding of the viewer's need to be included and entertained, and barely seemed aware that she was supposed to be presenting a television programme, as well as pointing out a few home truths to two well-meaning but inexperienced young parents.

It was shocking to see Dexter repeatedly head-butting his cot (well, cots are very expensive), but although Tracy's suggestion of padding the interior prevented further injury, I wondered just how authoritative and reliable her advice really was.

And after I'd read the closing caption, which informed us that "the opinions expressed by the people who appeared on this show are not intended as medical advice or diagnosis ... please seek professional advice from a qualified practitioner", it seemed best all round that the Baby Whisperer's words should fall on deaf ears.