Don't Call Me Stupid (ITV1)
'Whitaker gets a tour of Manchester and some unconnected mumbling from Bez' ... Don't Call Me Stupid. Photograph: ITV

Celebrities ... who needs them? A decade or so ago we thought they were interesting, we bought magazines that showed us inside their houses and sometimes their weddings. Slowly, though, we tired of them, and started to see them for the ridiculous creatures they are. We bought different magazines that mocked them, and showed them looking stupid. We put them on islands and watched their woeful attempts at love, we locked them in houses and watched them fight and go mad. Now, even that's boring.

So celebrities are officially over. But Don't Call Me Stupid (ITV1) hasn't realised it yet - not that tonight's pair are especially starry. Bez is famous for once - a very long time ago - being in a band. Actually, he wasn't really in the band, he danced maniacally next to it. And he took lots and lots of drugs. Now he's a bit fuddled.

And James Whitaker is a journalist - not even a proper one, like a war reporter or a TV critic, he's a royal correspondent. If, as he claims, the royals are all his best mates, we're hardly getting the balanced picture, are we?

They're very different, Bez and Whitaker; chalk and cheese, and that's the point. And maybe it is quite an amusing idea. They have to find out about each other's areas of expertise, and then they're tested on it. It's life swap meets Mastermind, kind of.

So Bez is taken by Rolls Royce to Balmoral, where he spends two weeks stalking salmon with Charles, necking cherry brandy and snogging the servants with Harry, and doing the highland fling with the Queen. Whitaker, meanwhile, has pills rammed down his neck - like a goose being fattened up for fois gras. Red Mercedes, Mitsubishis, Dolce & Gabbanas, Doves; in they all go. Soon, he finds his heart pumping, his head turning purple, a feeling of euphoria and benevolence to all mankind, and a never-before-experienced urge to dance. He's put in a cage, which is winched to the ceiling, then he dances like a banshee to Kinky Afro for three days, without stopping ...

Well, that's what should have happened. The truth is less interesting. Whitaker gets a tour of Manchester and some unconnected mumbling from Bez. Bez is taught how to address the Queen by one of James's etiquette chums. Bez and Whitaker appear to genuinely quite like each other, which is odd.

In the test part, Whitaker, more accustomed to red carpets than Inspiral ones, thinks the Smiths album featuring the band outside the Salford Lads Club is called Stone Roses, and renames A Guy Called Gerald "a chap called Geraldine", but he does correctly identify the Happy Mondays, which is good, especially given who his new best mate is. Bez does well on the monarchy, but in the quick-fire general-knowledge round he thinks the 19th-century leader known as the "iron chancellor" is Margaret Thatcher. He also manages to give "camel's hoof" as an answer, which is an achievement (google it if you don't know). But in the end he wins by two points. Hey, maybe there's a lesson in there, kids: drugs aren't as bad for you as everyone makes out. Better than wasting your life toadying around after the royal family, anyway.

The Real Dick Turpin: Revealed (Five) argues that the highwayman wasn't the glamorous, swashbuckling ladies' man he's so often made out to be at all, but a nasty piece of work. From Essex, too. As someone who remembers the TV series with Richard O'Sullivan in the late 70s and early 80s, this came as an enormous shock. And apparently Turpin didn't ride his horse Black Bess to York faster than GNER does the journey now, either. Next they'll be saying that Robin Hood couldn't slice through the rope hanging from a gallows with an arrow at half a mile.

Still, the show almost made up for this crushing disappointment by showing us a horse on a treadmill, and that's an amusing thing to see. What must it be thinking? I'm galloping along here, at full pelt, and yet I'm not getting any closer to this lady who's standing right in front of me - what's going on?

Then we got to see a man firing a blunderbuss at a watermelon, which was also fun - to demonstrate that it wasn't only people Turpin had it in for, he was a fruit murderer too. I'm glad he hanged.

Last night possibly wasn't the greatest ever on TV - it still seems to be August. Let's hope you were out.