Last night I sat down to watch The World’s Smallest Man and Me (Channel 4, Tuesday, 20 May, 10pm), well aware that there had been quite a stink surrounding it. I read of Mark Dolan’s continual reference to his own height and generally sniggering at the freak show. Well, I couldn’t avoid a viewing could I? I had to see if it was as bad as everyone had been saying. What struck me most about the show was… well… how pointless it all felt.

When I watch just about any programme, I want those involved to ask the tough questions and to get under the skin of the subject. Mark Dolan flitted between taaaalking veeery sloooowly to foreign people and making points your average viewer had already weighed up.

When faced with Khagendra Thapa Magar, a very small man indeed (little more that 2ft of him) Mark Dolan was content to summarise with ‘well, he seems happy enough’. There was no asking him if he enjoys the attention and fuss made over him. There was no questioning those that surround Khagendra Thapa Magar and their intentions. Again, he’s simply happy to assume that there’s a fuss imminent. I would have hoped that he’d ask those managing whether they feel like they are being exploitative.

After Magar, we met Yu-Chih, another claimant for the title of the world’s smallest man. Yu-Chih was an engaging man… an anthropologist and novelist. He was evidently a smart man with a lot to say. What did Mark Dolan choose as his line of questioning? That Yu-Chih got caught on a webcam having a wank once. What did this teach Mr Dolan? That, even though Yu-Chih is small, he’s just a normal person underneath it all. This blindingly obvious revelation seemed to thrill Dolan to the point of Tim Nice-But-Dim snorting. I imagine, after this second round of useless tosh, there was a spike of electricity use at the national grid as the whole of Britain went to make a brew, quite possibly staring at a tea-bag and wondering how something so inanimate could be so much smarter than the host of Balls of Steel.

The third man featured, He Ping Ping, brings trouble. Thank god. Permission to film and generally be in his presence, hadn’t been granted, and a verbal scuffle ensued. However, £400 later and all was well. With that cash went any hope of some decent television. When Dolan finally got the balls to start asking some decent questions, he ended up chickening out and resorting to “why are you so small?” So dim was the question, Dolan even said “did I really say that?” in his overdub. He Ping Ping made the sharpest comment of the whole show by pointing at Dolan and quipping “I don’t like his head”.

The show was so paper-thin and devoid of any real oomph that it felt like it should have been shunted off to E4 or something. For a channel that brought us Jon Ronson’s sublime Reverend Death, with its peeling away of the layers and difficult moments, this seemed entirely pointless.

What is worse than a man asking stupid questions and going bothering people with them? Well, it’s watching a man talking to adults with disabilities like they’re toddlers. As none of our featured ‘smallest men’ spoke a word of English, all they will have heard is a very patronising voice indeed. If someone had invented subtitles for thoughts, I’m almost certain that we would have been reading the words “Who is this blithering idiot? Why does he keep talking to me like I’m stupid? There’s nothing wrong with my brain y’know?” By the same token, reading Dolan’s thoughts would have read “How quaint this all is!”

So, in this incredibly un-illuminating show, what did we learn? Well, in Dolan’s round-up, he says that, basically, there’s money to be made in this ‘smallest man’ lark. Also, that we don’t really know who the world’s smallest man is (which was the entire point of the show) and, get this, we learned that getting a man with brittle bones and straightening their legs, and thus breaking the bones, to simply measure them “would be wrong”. He actually said that. So, if you were thinking of going out today and trying to straighten a paraplegic person’s back, just to see how tall they’d be when straightened out, don’t. No, no, don’t thank me, I got it off Mark ‘Brains’ Dolan.