I won’t spare the Rhod

TONIGHT on BBC1 you can watch some people installing a septic tank. This isn’t something I’d normally single out for your viewing pleasure, or describe as “must-see TV” (despite it being streets ahead of, say, Newsnight in that respect), but as it’s a scene from DIY SOS: CHILDREN IN NEED SPECIAL (9pm), where volunteers are helping build a kids’ adventure campsite on scrubland in East Yorkshire, of course it’s only right that I bring this programme to your attention.

As ever with these shows, the aim is to persuade us to donate whatever we can afford to the latest Pudsey appeal, by showing us things our previous donations have helped pay for.

And in that sense, yep, it works a treat. Honestly, you could sit down at 9pm thinking: “I’ll watch this if I must but that bear’s not getting another penny out of me” (I’m not saying you’d ever be that meanspirited, I’m just saying it’s an option) and by 10pm you’ll have eBayed all your worldly goods and texted him to let him know the proceeds are on the way.

My own advice, to be honest, would be to seek a middle ground between those extremes. I’m sure Rhod would be fine with that.

Oh yes, sorry, I should have mentioned: it’s comedian Rhod Gilbert hosting this one – standing in, just this once, for regular presenter Nick Knowles.

You heard about Nick and the Great Shreddies Controversy, I take it?

The BBC objected to a breakfast cereal commercial he made, not because it’s so dreadful that it makes you want to chuck cutlery at the telly, although obviously there’s that as well, but because it played too blatantly on his DIY:SOS role.

That sort of thing is strictly against BBC rules, just like it’s strictly against BBC rules for a presenter to spout their political views on social media unless they’re freelance and their political views are so important that the world simply has to hear them, as is the case with Gary Lineker.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes: DIY SOS.

The work it’s doing this evening is for St Michael’s Youth Project in

Hull (aka St Mike’s), where children who’ve not had the best opportunities can socialise, learn and play.

Within an eight-day deadline, can Rhod and pals build the children this fab new facility in the countryside?

In a nutshell, no, they can’t.They end up needing nine. But it turns out that’s fine, so God knows what the deadline was for.

Still, nit-picking aside, the result is tremendous.

Everyone weeps with joy, especially the grown-ups who run St Mike’s itself.

And Rhod? I’m delighted to report he’s a blubbering wreck.