Sniggering at mental torment ... how typical of prurient Channel 4

Channel 4’s executives must be like a pack of dogs on heat. One sniff of sex and they’re baying at the moon. late-night gaps in the schedule are frequently plugged with their naked attraction dating show where contestants stand in neon booths to be revealed starkers, like a pervy version of Star Trek’s teleporter.

So it’s no surprise that when C4 heard about a mental illness which causes incessant unwanted thoughts, they were immediately titillated by the possibilities.

Pure (C4) is the story of Marnie, a 24-year-old woman who flees her Scottish village because she’s embarrassed about the ugly images of sex tormenting her imagination. She hates herself for dwelling on them constantly.

It’s a horrible condition, a variant of obsessive compulsive disorder [ OCD] that psychiatrists call ‘pure-O’, and it is more common than most people (even the sufferers) generally realise. These thoughts can be about violence, death, loss, betrayal — whatever is most appalling to the individual.

Incredibly, Channel 4 plays this idea for laughs. We met Marnie last week at a family birthday party, where she was overwhelmed by a blizzard of visions of her relatives having sex. The second episode had her distracted at work by pornographic antics in meetings. Pure invites us to snigger at the sheer embarrassment factor.

Yet Marnie already has two men keen on her, and she doesn’t know which she likes better. This is billed as a comedy-drama — it’s desperate to be a filthy Bridget Jones’s Diary, but falls pitifully short.

as always in TV with a selfconscious message, the acting often felt like the awkward improvisation of drama students. and everything is weighed down by a heavily ‘significant’ soundtrack, with songs such as The Kinks’ I’m not like everybody else.

It’s typical of C4’ s prurient, sensationalist attitude to mental illness in general and OCD in particular — they gave us Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners, and countless documentaries about Tourette’s syndrome, which they regard as an excuse to blurt naughty words.

For viewers who want to know more about ‘pure-O’, David adam’s 2014 bestseller The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is a far better place to start. adam spent his life racked by fears that he had cut himself and contracted aids. Small wonder C4 wasn’t interested — what’s saucy about that set-up?

a far superior look at a widespread but little acknowledged misery was supplied by Behind Closed Doors: Through The Eyes Of A Child (BBC2). Four brave youngsters aged seven to 14 described what it was like to live in terror of violent abuse at home. all the stories were nightmarish, though they lost some power when the narrative switched too much between them.

The last case was the most extreme. We watched police tapes of an interview with Kirstie, then 12, whose mother natalie had vanished overnight. Detectives were sure the girl knew more than she dared say. Gradually, they coaxed details of the abuse from her.

her stepfather once made her stand in the corner of the sitting room for 13 hours, as a punishment for leaving an apple in her schoolbag. Throughout the night he kept checking that she hadn’t fallen asleep — and she was too terrified to tell anyone.

he was convicted of natalie’s murder, and Kirstie now lives with her aunt. She’s free from daily fear, but not from the lasting psychological scars.

Kirstie and the other children who spoke to film-maker anna hall deserve our thanks, for having the courage to tell their stories.