Déjà vu, all over again

Off the Beaten Track ITV1

I thought you should be the first to know that I've finally broken through into the Hollywood scene.

But surprisingly, it's not my smoky good looks (the smokier the better) as revealed by the new photo on this page that have persuaded Lalaland to pay me vast amounts of money, it's my decision to embark upon some no-nonsense blackmailing of diminutive film stars with oversized egos.

It's simple. Dressed as Captain Rulerman (in black tights, and a cape with a giant fluorescent tape measure embroidered up the back), I sneak up to the likes of Tom Cruise and politely ask them for an autograph, while a paparazzo colleague clicks away from behind, capturing photographic proof that the star in question is only 4ft 9in, and not 6ft 4in as claimed by his PR company.

Watch out Leonardo DiCaprio. Cough up $4 million or Captain Rulerman will very soon have the measure of you (and he won't be the first man to do that, according to rumour).

If Prince Charles (with his new missus) ever makes it to the throne, I'll be able to expose him as a bit of a short ruler too, as well as a lightweight one.

His lack of avoirdupois is easy to prove, because he and his fellow aristos have been regularly weighed on the giant scales at Berry Bros & Rudd, and last night's edition of Off the Beaten Track had access to the antique handwritten ledger in which the results are preserved.

Of course, everyone knows that the great and the ( occasionally not so) good have been weighing themselves there since the 18th century, and for almost as long, journalists have been trying to delight the public by filing amusing reports about the phenomenon, so Nigel Farrell's attempt to astonish us with this well-worn story was simply déjà vu all over again.

And for him to do so on a programme that claims "to reveal unusual stories about London's colourful history" was so shameless that I soon concluded the man must have more bottle than ... well, than Berry Bros & Rudd.

Thursday evening's opt-out slot is almost the sole remaining manifestation of ITV's once-proudly regional identity, and this programme certainly played the local heritage card for all it was worth.

So it was that we were taken to Windsor's Guildhall to see Sir Christopher Wren's famous hefty columns that support absolutely nothing (I know how he feels - people often tell me that my thick columns are completely insupportable), and then to Walthamstow, to marvel at the place where Frederick Bremer built a petrol-driven car in 1892.

"This is the house where he made motoring history," Farrell assured us, and that might have been true if Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler hadn't both built their petrol-driven vehicles in the mid-1880s, and if Bremer's hadn't looked quite so much like a pram with a brandy barrel strapped to the front.