THERE are two things people should never, ever have to listen to: James Blunt singing and Fern Britten swearing.

Sadly I was subjected to both this week.

Blunt I can get over, but Fern? Cuddly This Morning's I-can't-speak-for-giggling Fern, not only told someone to "p... off" but also used the F-word, and I don't know about you, but it felt like hearing a nun swear.

Fortunately for the nation, she wasn't cursing her daytime co-presenter Pip Schofield, Fern's foul fall from grace occurred on Thank God You're Here (ITV1, Saturday, 9pm), Paul Merton's astonishingly bad new comedy' show where celebrities are dropped into an unknown situation being acted out by what seem to be extras off Extras and forced to improvise.

Oh, it was bad. So bad, questions should be asked in high places.

Like why did Fern, darling of the maternity-leave and early-retirement brigade, feel it was worth wrecking her reputation on? Why did it ever get commissioned? And why is Paul Merton, surreally brilliant and so funny on Have I Got News For You not saying: "Thank God I didn't do that!"?

And here's another question. Is Tower Bridge' really the coded message for informing royals that the king or queen has died or is that just another aspect of royal life The Palace (ITV1, 9pm, Mondays) made up?

This was how the heir to the throne was told the news in this new series which was very silly, but surprisingly entertaining, probably because it is a soap opera about a British royal family going out at a time when the endless drama surrounding the real royal clan grows more fantastical by the minute.

In the first episode we meet the firm'.

Mother, the dowager Queen (Jane Asher, all wobbly legs and stiff upper pearls), is that peculiarly aristocratic blend of terribly frail and hard as nails.

Father, well he's Tower Bridge' as we already know.

Princess One is a conniving bitch who is furious she's not Queen (nothing like Princess Margaret at all then).

Princess Two is an Emo (no, I'm not kidding and if you say I am I'll cry for ages and cut my hair into a lopsided bob).

Prince One, and heir to the throne, is a clean-cut, conscientious but fun-loving good egg.

The younger Prince Two is a rebellious party animal with mussed up hair who downs tequilas and is a bit street'. So nothing like those real-life Windsor boys at all, then.

Anyway, the makers must be thanking their lucky stars, for while it's on air, that other royal soap opera starring Paul Butler, Mohamed Al Harrods, Diana (played by her memory), her mother, who can be a bit of a Fern herself by all accounts and Mr Wonderful (played by Dr Hasnat Khan) will be fanning the flames of the public's interest in the darker underbelly of royal life, and as our national newspapers' testify, we just can't get enough of it.

Unlike The One and Only (BBC1, Saturday, 6.30pm). I've had enough and I only watched half of it. If ever there was cause for a TV show to do as its name implied, this is it. But no, it's not the only one, it's a whole series made up of slightly deranged-looking people who have tricked themselves - but surely no-one else - into believing they're a bunch of celebrities.

You wouldn't want to see a performance by half the celebs they were supposed to be impersonating, so why would you want to see a feeble fake version?

There was the trick Lionel Richie. Until I heard him sing, I thought he was being Borat and would be doing funny stuff about Kazakhstan. The trick Elton looked like Roy Chubby Brown (mind you, sometimes the real one does) and as for the trick Rod Stewart. Does he have no friends? Was there really nobody who cared about him enough to sit him down and tell him that not only did he not look anything like the craggy-faced rocker (and why would he want to?), but that he looked really, really stupid.

Which was a shame, because he seemed like a nice enough guy and he could easily have won if only he'd said he was Freddie Starr with a dead rodent on his head - cos that's who he DID look like.