Monday night is Morgan Mathews night.

Following on from the soap wasteland that is Emmerdale / Corrie I / Eastenders / Corrie II with it's cartoon characters and outlandish drama it has been a joy to find the documentaries of Morgan Mathews on Beeb2 for the past two Mondays. Usually involving cartoon characters and outlandish drama!

Last week's BLUE SUEDE JEW looked to be a simple one-joke film profiling Gilles Elmalih, Israel's premiere Elvis Presley impersonator. It could almost write itself yeah? Nope.

After meeting Elmalih at the 'European Elvis Impersonator' Championships in Blackpool (!) Mathews followed him back to his West Bank home and met his wife Liz and her two teenage sons by her first marriage. They claimed the eldest son was clairvoyant and, in a trance, was possessed by the spirit of Elvis who was urging the family to move to the USA where fame would be theirs. Oh and when the son wasn't in a trance Elvis communicated with them by letter in Hebrew, scrunched up pages lobbed onto the kitchen floor by an unseen hand. The sign that this would all take place would be a phone call from Uri Geller yet! As the self-imposed deadline looms for the call Mathews decides to get the BBC to contact Geller on the basis that he's grown to like the man and would hate for him to be disappointed - and to lengthen his documentary of course! Geller - never one to balk at a tv appearance - calls and invites them to his house in the US should they ever be in the area. Cue Elmalih and wife flying to America but not before Mathews tells them that Geller called because of him. They refuse to believe him, telling him that Elvis was obviously working through him. What followed of course was big dreams being shrivelled in the cold light of day.

This week's was HAIR WARS profiling two stories relating to the World Hairdressing Championships - again a subject easy for a few easy laffs. But again Mathews managed to penetrate the layer. One strand followed John Phelps a double World Champion hairdresser who in 1996, after having a rock n roll moment insulting the judges and trashing his hotel room, was banned from competition for five years. He has since married a fellow prize-winning hairdresser divorcee and they have set up an academy teaching under-privileged youngsters how to follow in their footsteps. His biggest challenge is to try and relate to his wife's twin daughters by her jailbird ex, one of whom made Vicky Pollard sound like Hermione Granger. Counter-pointing this story was Keith Broughton the team manager for the UK Team heading for the championships. At the start he and his wife Marcella are seen heading off to the Hairdressing Awards - "It's very exclusive, invitation only", by the time the championship comes round they are living apart due in no small measure to his leading stylist, a salon Lucretia Borgia who spits venom with every blow-dry over any of her competitors. In one priceless exchange at a competition we overhear him tell her she did a brilliant styling "you know me I wouldn't fanny you about" to which she responds "I'd fanny you about". I'm still trying to get my toes to uncurl.

Keep 'em coming Mr. Mathews!