Spencer Pratt

Television Heroes - Spencer Pratt, again

It was only since I watched MTV's Jersey Shore that I realised what a long-standing and revered tradition fist-pumping is amongst Italian Americans. Their Sicilian grandparents first came to the Land of the Free with nothing in their pockets but their fists, but they then proceeded to pump them so energetically in the large industrial nightclubs of the 19th century robber-barons that it made America great. Well, now The Hills' Spencer Pratt plans to produce a dating-show vehicle for Jersey Shore reject Emilio Masella using the title Fist Pumping for Love. Although the basic premise seems to set Masella up as a kind of sex criminal (he's to roam the country in a van looking for women), I'm sure the duo will work the kinks out soon enough. With two great reality television families coming together like this beneath such an amazing title, I think it's safe to predict that this programme will mock the Gods with its greatness.

Television Heroes II - The Story of Science

Each week on BBC's very entertaining The Story of Science, Michael Mosley examines the precariously thin line between clever and daft. This week we learned that alchemist Henning Brandt discovered phosphorous while trying to make gold out of his own wee. "I suspect that Henning Brandt was not tremendously popular with girls," gasped Mosley through urine fumes while recreating the experiment. Ultimately Mosley's tour through the history of western science is underpinned by warmth, affection and humanity. Never more so than when he recounts how chemist Antoine Lavoisier (the man who named oxygen) was sent to the guillotine by the French revolutionary government. "It took just an instant to sever his head," wrote a friend at the time. "But a hundred years would not suffice to produce another like it."