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CLOWNS was the new documentary from Daisy Asquith, the talented filmmaker who last year gave us a moving and life-affirming film about the oldest people in the world.

Her latest effort, an insight into the daily lives of three clowns of the children's party variety, was anything but life affirming.

While the three men featured were perfectly professional while working, aspects of their private lives were strange to say the least.

One seemed to regard all children, his own daughter included, with at best distrust and at worst utter foul-mouthed loathing; another lamented his lack of a wife and family while showing little evidence of being able to like women, let alone love them. The third was the most likeable, but I'm sure I wasn't the only viewer who felt uncomfortable when this grown man spoke of how his mother's dementia deprived him of cuddles.

Almost as an aside, we were introduced to a former children's entertainer called The Great Velcro, who was cautioned after hitting an unruly kid.

Who says the widespread fear of clowns is irrational?

Extraordinary People: the Human Camera was good in that it gave publicity to one of our greatest artists, architecture specialist Stephen Wiltshire.

However, it was bad in the sense that it harped on about Wiltshire's autism, chucking in just about every Rain Man cliché while saying very little about the condition that any reasonably informed person would not know already. I would sooner have had more emphasis on Wiltshire and his exquisite art.

Mind you, next week's Extraordinary People is tastefully and sensitively entitled Half Man Half Tree, so we should perhaps be grateful for small mercies.

Cotton Wool Kids, meanwhile was a disturbing cutting edge documentary about parents whose desire to keep their children safe had become an unhealthy obsession. The misery of their shut-in lives was heart-rending.

1:19pm Monday 14th April 2008

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