NIGEL KENNEDY

Or Nige', as I suspect he likes to be known.

Heard of him? I hadn't, but what a pretentious twonker.

I had BBC TV on silent and came in with my peanuts and coquetail du soir and there was this hideous sight. Ugh.

OK, I thought, one of those worthy documentaries showing how a distracting hobby can help lift even the most afflicted above mere physical setbacks - in this case, a nasty case of keratosic psoriasis.

Not to be thought squeamish, I turned up the vol.

A charitable orchestra - dressed prawperly - was allowing some scruff with a bad case of St Vitus to scrape along.

He finished with a flourish and tell-tale swivel-eyed preening. Then, to my consternation for their hygienic wellbeing, Baldilocks proceeded to snog the dishier violinistas, who had clearly been alerted because they didn't even flinch as Kenners he homed in with his plucked-chicken bonce.

Then followed an 'interview' which he fielded with the most excruciating faux working-class accent, using pretentious vocab such as gig, chops, axe and other Hendrixian blabber to describe the music.

Unfortunately for Rosin le Beau, I had him busted bang to rights, having once met his parents: they speak with perfectly acceptable educated accents. So whence cometh our Noige's strangled Higginsonian vow'z?

I couldnt tell if he fiddled any good, like, but *he* clearly thought so from his giggly cavortings; the orchestra was a model of tact, delivering rictus smiles all round.

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for these rehabilitation programmes - whatever gets people on their feet and back into society - but to broadcast the process on a public network, and a family one, to boot?

I confess I ogled the spectacle to the end but not without an uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism spiced with a guilty dollop of armchair cruelty.