DUCHESS OF FULL IN HULL

THE DUCHESS IN HULL (ITV1) was an interesting twist on the usual Wife Swap / healthy eating shows.

Sarah Ferguson - who gamely talked about having once been labelled the 'Duchess of Pork... it rhymes with York' - went to live with the six-strong Sargerson family on the east coast outpost.

A family with such bad teeth you felt like reaching for the pliers.

A family who are going to cause so much self-inflicted damage to themselves and NHS budgets by smoking so much, that you felt like asking Gordon Brown to redirect their benefits to China's helpless earthquake victims.

A family so rich in cultural history they didn't even recognise one of the country's most famous women when she walked through their front door.

But, after more than a decade living in the US, the Fergie of today is a very different one from the one they would have known when she married Prince Andrew.

Having tried to champion healthy eating in the US, Fergie is now using a British family as her base camp for doing the same in Britain.

Good luck to her.

But the Sargerson family in question, like so many in this country today, seem to be so far beyond the line of austere normality which confronted the post-war generation that I doubt whether even a personality as large as Fergie can save their souls.

At least she's trying having learned the hard way that to give of yourself is the best way to achieving personal enrichment.

Here, remember, is a woman who seemed to have that infectious sense of fun we love in all of our best friends.

She could also have been the one Royal we'd all identify and feel comfortable with.

By a strangely circuitous journey, she still might still get there after part two at 9pm tonight.