We all love Dame Julie. She’s like the Queen with a Brummie accent

HOW we glamorise our cheaper instincts. ‘I love trying on other people’s lives,’ says Dame Julie Walters in Coastal Railways ( C4). ‘That’s why I’m an actor.’

What luvvie pretension. She’s travelling the country’s seaside rail lines, meeting the locals and peering into their world. It’s plain nosiness. Since she’s so very good at being nosy, why not admit it?

And Gawd knows why she wants to pretend that ‘actor’ is not a male noun. She’s an ‘actress’. Otherwise, if she’s decided she’s a bloke, surely she should be Sir Julie Walters.

However much she gives herself silly airs, everyone loves Sir Julie. She’s like the Queen with a Brummie accent. A visit from her is an honour, and it’s great fun to see the delight of ordinary people when she waltzes in.

Even the toffs in the first- class carriage of a Virgin InterCity 125, though they pretended not to recognise her, were secretly thrilled. You could see them sneaking excited glances.

The conductress almost fainted when she punched Sir Julie’s ticket. ‘Apart from Cat Stevens, you’ve been my favourite passenger!’ she gasped. It’s such a lovely line, you could imagine it was written by Victoria Wood.

Not that Sir Julie spent much time in the passenger carriages. She was much more at home in the cab, chatting up Adrian the driver and waving regally to the other trains they passed.

Adrian was a bit of a star himself. He relished the flat- out speed of his 125 and had no time for the nostalgia brigade. ‘Steam engines are just kettles,’ he declared.

This journey, the second in a fourpart series, took us along the North Sea coastline from Newcastle to Edinburgh, past caravan parks that clung to the clifftops like copper coins on the brink of a Penny Falls arcade machine. How they didn’t tumble down into the sea was a miracle.

We stopped at a second-hand bookshop that long ago had been a branch-line station, where the owner once found a musty wartime poster and framed it because he liked the slogan: ‘Keep Calm And Carry On.’ It started the craze that launched a million tea-towels.

And Sir Julie tried her hand at nursing baby lobsters in a shellfish hatchery. ‘Ooh, they’re moving about!’ she squirmed as she carried a bucket of wriggling crustaceans — it’s just a guess, but I’ve a feeling the real Queen would be less squeamish.

Some of the fighting automatons on Robot Wars (BBC2) appeared to be modelled on lobsters, all pincers and shell. You wouldn’t fancy them with chips, though.

Robot Wars is an enthusiasts’ show, chiefly for small boys who enjoy Meccano and stinkbombs, but the final was spectacular enough to entertain everyone.

From start to finish it was all- out mechanical mayhem, with commentator Jonathan Pearce on fine, deranged form. ‘ If I don’t survive this,’ he howled, ‘tell my wives, all 162 of them, I love them!’

The battle began with a ‘ten robot rumble’, with most of the losers from preceding heats battering each other till only one was left intact.

Then the weekly winners set about smashing, bashing, scything, dicing, hammering, savaging and catapulting, in an hour-long blur of metal carnage.

Even the Dalai Lama would have to admit that violence this overblown can be fun.

For reasons inexplicable, this year’s battles have included a ‘fog of war’ feature where smoke envelops the floor, hiding all the robots. Whoever thought that was a smart idea must have rusty nuts and bolts for brains.

Otherwise, this grand finale was a hoot.