STEPHEN FRY once appeared on BBC Two's Room 101. Among the items he wanted banished to the pit of nothingness was critics. What, he mused, would these people declare they had busied themselves with on earth when it was their time at the pearly gates? Their entire occupation was destructive, rather than creative. What purpose did they serve?

Leaving aside the fact that he now does those terrible and not terribly creative Twinings tea ads, Fry was, not for the first time, talking absolute nonsense in a rather entertaining fashion. Critics do what they do to stop others wasting their time, culture's tasters for poisons that might result in other people wasting important minutes of their hugely important lives.

This week, On the Air watched two programmes that made it wonder whether all this is worth it. A mite rich, you may cry, from somebody who appears to write a few paragraphs of less-thanamusing guff after watching the box and listening to the radio all week. And you'd be well within your rights, this isn't digging drains. But, while watching these two shows, giving up seemed the only option.

Calling it a day. Ringing the boss and begging for a fishing column.

Consideration was even given to making up a rugby subplot in The Sopranos, or pretending that Girls Aloud revealed their love of camogie to the E4 cameras. But strength was found, teeth were gritted, toes were curled and the shows were watched in their entirety.

The Unbelievable Truth, RTE Two's mockumentary effort, this week made Roy Keane its subject. "The only person to beat Roy Keane in a staring match was Stevie Wonder."

That was the first gag. It was also the funniest. This abomination of a half hour consisted of out-of-work comedians doing fake talking head bits dressed up in a ?wacky' fashion and speaking in voices that were not their own. It was screamingly, nauseatingly, fingernail scrapingly unfunny. It encouraged only anger and bile. It should not have been on television. It should not have been seen by humans.

Colin Murphy gurned his way through a witless script that didn't have the intelligence to take advantage of the freedom offered by the concept. With anything possible, what the writers came up with was random garbage that neglected narrative but offered countless hamfisted attempts at topical humour and zaniness that made the skin crawl. Seen those Chuck Norris jokes on email? Well, here they were again, and not even the good ones. This column would pay excellent money to see Keane watch this and offer his own critique to the makers. Awful.

Over on Sky One we've come to expect a certain standard. When one of their shows surpasses this standard, the tendency is towards shock and a scanning of the credits to check if the BBC were involved in some way. On Monday night they showed a programme called Hollywood Grand Prix. What did On the Air expect? An amalgam of the two most crushingly boring phenomena of our age - motorsport and celebrity - it was never going to be pretty.

The grand prix in question was a race betweem famous types around a track in LA. Footballer turned X-Man Vinnie Jones was the only British representative, and was feeling the pressure, saying, "I've got plenty on me shoulders". Not as much as you might think, big man.

Lining up alongside Martina Navratilova, Malcolm in the Middle, Xzibit and that guy who's in everything - you know him, the fella with the weird face, he's usually evil, you do know him, the cop in Pulp Fiction in the gimp scene, yeah him - Vinnie set about driving really badly and boring people over the course of 90 minutes. He had plenty of company on the personality bypass, with the selection of celebrities remarkable for its lack of character.

This was apart from William Shatner, who takes part every year despite being as bad a driver as Vinnie, the organisers clearly clinging to the only ounce of humour they have.

Vinnie told us about Yanks - "when you say football they think you mean American football" - let us listen into his private straight-faced mobile phone conversations - "Let me know if Brad and Angelina are coming, cos I'll have to leave out two tickets for them" - and kept producing union jacks to stick on anything that moved. Sadly he didn't crash, but he did finish 10th behind a safety car after other people did. "I haven't felt like this since we won the cup final, " blubbed Jones, before a highlights package reminded us of the previous 90 soulless minutes. One of the highlights was Vinnie Jones putting on his seatbelt.

Critics: here to serve and protect.

We watched these shows so you don't have to. Be careful out there.