This weekend, I’ve taken in too much booze and my liver is angry with me. I’ve had late nights and been restless due to a slight increase in temperature. The council tax people are on my back because I’m a bit forgetful and the bank want to take my money. Still, at least I haven’t got it as bad as the ‘stars’ of When Stunts Go Bad (ITV4, Sunday, 7pm).

Basically, ITV4 is the new Five. Showing us programmes that revolve around people running away from the weather and people being attacked by animals. Instead of being true documentaries, they’re more like You’ve Been Framed… only with more blood. The video footage of (some of the most dangerous) stunts (ever attempted!) isn’t enough to entice you in. So with that, the title gives you the promise of these feats going horrendously wrong. Featuring a whole host of mashed up daredevils, this show is designed to a) Tell us all that, in no situation should you ever deem it sensible to hurtle off ramps at great speed if you like your innards and b) Whittle away the time until something decent comes on.

Of course, this show was made on a budget, so you can’t hope for Evel Knievel (the only stuntman anyone’s really heard of). All you can hope for is a crash tricycle (see picture above) or someone turning their spine into mush for the sake of our entertainment. Sadly for these men (and it’s always men… you women are far too smart to put yourself through needless misery), most people watch things like this in the hope that it will all end in tears… on a stretcher… thrown onto an ambulance… from a ramp… through a flaming hoop of death.

The mostly southern American (by which I mean from the south of the USA) men who seem to get their kicks from defying death seem to take great pride in their injuries. Like it’s some kind of trophy in itself. One bloke, obviously a lunatic, crowed about a bike crash that left him feeling like he’d broken his back and pelvis. Since when did breaking your bones become a skill? I mean, if I threw myself off a motorway bridge into the morning rush, chances are, I’d break stuff. It’s not a skill… it’s mortality.

Worse still for these chaps, the world only gets to see them ducking away from death’s creepy grasp on shows like this, and the by-product of that is desensitisation. After you’ve seen someone land on their head at 100mph, then by the time you get to someone crashing a boat at 200mph, you’re not all that fussed unless you see an arm coming off. Which you don’t.

So what drives these men? I want to be the fastest man on [insert specialist field here]. Well, I hate to break it to you buddy… but you can go faster in a plane going on your holidays. Guess what? Whilst I’m traveling at such high speeds, I can eat crisps and have a glass of whisky… and you’re crowing about doing a jump on a bike with no hands? [Mof Gimmers]