I watched the last half of Panorama last night while I was preparing myself for City Of Vice over on Channel 4. Blur’s Alex James – now cheese maker and farmer or something – went to Columbia to investigate the country’s rampant cocaine industry. It was very interesting, but trying to fit a whistle-stop tour around Columbia in half an hour? C’mon! This subject deserves to be exlpored in much greater depth, as there were some new approaches to drug taking and drug production.

We saw Alex (he’d taken cocaine once at a party and his hip with the kids, so he was the perfect man to host this, surely) in Bogota, talking to dealers, users, contract killers and evern journeying out into the jungle to meet some cocoa farmers. He even met the president and presented him with some cheese from his farm (did I say he was now a farmer?).

So there was a lot of stuffed packed into this half an hour. The car ride with the contract killer was very hairy, while the trip into the jungle revealed how farmers have no real choice in growing cocoa – they saif there was anything else to grow they would grow it, because making cocaine is a long and smelly process. You have to mix the cocoa leaves with petrol (yes, petrol!) and other horrible things. If this process didn’t put you off I don’t know what will.

So it was interesting, and rather good. Apart from Alex James. I saw him on Question Time last week and he was rubbish and annoying (nice bloke yes, but very, very vacant). He was the same here… his expression didn’t really change, whether he was getting into a car with a hitman or enjoying a boat ride down a river.

We’ve seen lots of shows like this in recent times, where westerners go and look at other cultures (Tribe, Medicine Men Go Wild), but I think there’s mileage in a whole series like this – it will show people just waht these farmers go through, and how a whole country can be ripped apart by drugs.