Nope. No way. sorry!

Love in Oldham may have set out with the best of intentions - to illustrate how hard it is to maintain a mixed race relationship in the highly charged climate of racism - but only served to show Oldham as a town full of losers.

Moby and Catherine would have done better to go on the Trisha programme than to bother with a PC Channel four documentary - which in the end taught us nothing.

Aside from the fact that Moby and Catherine were from different cultural backgrounds, they also had a huge age difference to contend with. Catherine was barely out of school. Moby had been out of school since David Hasselhoff was cool - and had apparently done nothing constructive since.

There was some attempt to stimulate discussion between the two of them on camera - asking them what it was like to be on opposing sides in this race war. Moby managed a few mumbled sentences - Catherine only had aggreived and ill-informed sounding teenage whining to offer. None of it offered any enlightenment on the issues in hand.

We were shown distressing footage of demonstrations, violence, heavy police presence etc in Oldham. Moby and Catherine seemed to look on the action in a similar way the rest of us might watch a parade - as spectators.

The documentary then descended into tedious farce, as Catherine repeatedly texted him, drunk, from a nightclub - as he accused her of being a slut. He had already been caught red handed with her friend in a club earlier in the programme. Ummm - what was the relevance of this? Were we seriously meant to beleive that these two no-hopers were driven to this mindless, immature and self absorbed behaviour because of the differences in their skin colour? What an insulting concept. They were simply enjoying the cameras being there, and playing up to it.

If this was meant to be some kind of 'Romeo and Juliet' scenario, then it couldn't have done worse. Neither Catherine nor
Moby seemed to have anything more than a grudging resignation to the relationship.

When questioned on the chances of marriage between them, they both seemed keen. But why? To annoy their families? To have a piss up? There was no evidence of any real emotional attchment here.

Catherine was filmed talking to her racist mother - this was the most interesting part of the programme. Catherine's mother was against the marriage. So would I have been! This girl was only a child herself, and the man in question had not exactly been reliable so far. The race issue didn't really seem to come into it, though her mother would have preferred her to marry a white boy - for reasons she couldn't defend very intelligently.

This programme depressed me on so many levels. The area of Oldham where it was filmed looked appalling - though I'm sure there are positive aspects of living in that kind of community. The narrow minded and ill informed attitudes of the participants, along with their inability to express any real ideas or opinions may have led some viewers to think that this represents Oldham and it's problems.

I hope it wasn't truly representative - if it was, then I don't see how any progress can be made in ending the appalling violence that has now become endemic there. These people can only see as far as their own front door - and even then, they are aggressive about it. Surely the residents of Oldham deserve better than this? Come on Channel 4. Make a balanced documentary, featuring intelligent opinions and illustrating the true community spirit that must still thrive there on some level.

Don't turn this serious problem into a Jerry Springer-esque freakshow.