Your Money or Your Wife, C4, 25 October, 8.30 p.m.

Despite claims by some that Britain has become a nanny state, what we are in fact living under is a dominatrix dictatorship.

Just watch any terrestrial TV station for a couple of hours. It’s inevitable at some point you’ll encounter a stern-faced disciplinarian issuing a series of orders to some masochistic member of the public.

But as if Mistress McKeith, Mistress Frost et al aren’t enough, C4’s latest strict mistress is double-barrelled dominatrix Cesarina Holm-Kander, Your Money or Your Wife’s whip cracking financial trouble-shooter. Holm-Kander, the show's self-styled ‘Debt Buster’, aims to bring her boardroom expertise to the bedroom and help couples climb the debt mountain they’ve managed to accumulate; and with the average debt of the under 30s being £8,000, Holm-Kander won’t be short of victims.

First in the series was credit card queen Kerri, a 22-year old psychology student and model, who was definitely more model than student. Label lover Kerri (motto: life’s too short not to get everything you want) felt it was important to look good and live up to her expectations of life, but was unable to manage this on her alleged £40,000 salary, and had ran up a five-figure debt on credit cards.

It wasn’t difficult to see how this had happened. Kerri admitted to spending £3-4,000 a month on clothes, had two silver convertibles, and had undergone a £5,000 boob job in 2004, although it was perhaps appropriate that the latter should have been financed by plastic.

Amazingly, boyfriend James (motto: If you can’t afford it you shouldn’t get it) was unaware as to the full extent of Kerri’s spending, although you would have thought he couldn’t have missed the overnight breast enhancement and been curious as to how it was paid for. Maybe he was having too much fun.

Mistress Cesarina (motto: spending money you don’t have to achieve your dream is the recipe for a financial nightmare) certainly had some work to do as not only were the couple deep in debt but planning to go into business together and open a nightclub. Could she whip the profligate pair into equitable shape?

The first part of Cesarina’s master(card) class was to reveal the true extent of Kerri’s debts, not just to James, but to the debt diva herself. Kerri’s tenuous grip on her financial affairs was such that she was unaware of how much she was in arrears, although you’d have thought a model would have known a thing or two about figures.

Kerri told James she was “30-40 thousand” in debt, although Cesarina was quick to point out the exact figure was £41,000. If you were being generous you could say Kerri was only a thousand out, but it would perhaps be more accurate to state she was £11,000 out. James was surprised it was that much (“I thought it was half of that”), although Kerri at least had some idea where the money had gone (“I shouldn’t have bought all those shoes.”).

After Cesarina got financial and informed Kerri she was technically insolvent, then explained to her exactly what this phrase meant, the mistress got down to drawing-up a post-nup agreement and attempting to pass on the organisational skills needed to manage their debt. Being a financial expert, Cesarina reckoned she could knock off £9,000 of Kerri’s debts inside two weeks, although I wasn’t that impressed. Even though I’m a beginner at this financial advisor stuff, I could have knocked £41,000 off James’s debts inside two minutes with some simple advice: dump Kerri. However, James was determined to stand by his woman, insisting that they were “in this together”.

Despite this declared spirit of togetherness, he was strangely absent from the next part of Cesarina’s attempts to “dent the debt”, a spot of public shaming. As a psychology student Kerri should have understood the motivation here. Carrying a suitcase of £20 notes which contained the amount she was paying in interest on her debt each month, Kerri had to walk the streets and hand out to passers-by the money for thing, explaining to them as she did so why she was being so generous. Kerri thought this exercise was a waste, although as her mistress was quick to point out, this was what she was doing on a corporate basis by virtue of her interest payments each month.

But just in case the symbolic effect of the lesson wasn’t enough, James obeyed their mistress’s next set of instructions by cutting up all of Kerri’s cards. In addition to this was an enforced budget of £7 a day, with all their financial decisions having to be made together and Cesarina having access to their online accounts.

Following this was the inevitable asset-stripping which, understandably, had the Visa vixen feeling a little nervous, but while she was likely to lose the shirt off her back it was unlikely Cesarina was so strict she was going to take the implants from her chest. After going through her possessions and calling in an auctioneer, Cesarina was confident she could raise £2,000 by selling the tagged items, but James and Kerri resisted the proposed flogging by their monetary mistress.

James said he’d “rather get a job than sell this stuff” which in more than the way he’d meant revealed why the pair were so indebted. Kerri also refused to sell many of her ”investments”, such as the £900 bag she’d ‘invested’ in. But, as Cesarina pointed out, this wasn’t an investment, it was a debt in the shape of a £900 bag. This also applied to £34,000 debt in the shape of a BMW Beamer that was parked next to the other convertible that Kerri couldn’t part with as she wanted ‘the best of anything’. With an attitude and car like that, it was no surprise when Cesarina fitted Kerri with a tracking device so she could be monitored 24 hours a day.

The next stage in installing discipline in Kerri was an attempt to show the superficial and ultimately pointless nature of her desire for image. Kerri had to discern a designer bag from a high street one, which, unsurprisingly, she was unable to do – but then she wasn’t alone. When the bags were shown to people on the street (the people Kerri the ‘model’ was most likely to spend her time mixing with), they too were unable to tell the difference or which was the most expensive-looking. As Cesarina pointed out, many celebs wear high-street attire, and besides this try and blag as much free stuff as possible. Some of them probably even take advantage of the firm Holm-Kander mentioned that offered designer bags for a £30 monthly hire fee.

But the final test of Kerri’s newly found obedience was a spot of entrapment. Could she resist the ultimate accessory of the conspicuously consumptive: a pampered pooch as carried by the likes of Paris Hilton?

Knowing of Kerri’s desire for a £1000 pug puppy, Cesarina had a secret meeting with James (in the front of a parked car for added furtive authenticity) to inform him of her cunning plan. James was to take Kerri to her pedigree chum to see if he could use a pug to make a mug of her. Four hidden cameras were recording the occasion with James attempting to entice Kerri. However, she refused to take the bait, worrying that she didn’t want Cesarina to “lose respect for me or be told off”. Right on cue after this display of submission, Cesarina rang Kerri to congratulate her for not giving in to temptation.

By the end of the first month Cesarina had saved the couple £9845, although this sum was perhaps less impressive when taken into account the £7900 that had been saved by selling one of the cars. Much of the advice Holm-Kander had given (organise your bills, pay them on time) was the practical advice you’d expect a layman to offer, and when the financial expert told them that all they had to do to clear the remaining £31,155 was carry on with £7 a week budget for the next two years you had to wonder if it wasn’t just Kerri with the tenuous grip of financial reality.

But then this hadn’t all been about financial gains, and the experience had taught Kerri and James lessons about each other. The psychology student had learnt she can’t have everything she wants and James had learnt his woman can be tamed, but then what else would you expect a dominatrix to teach you?

Guys and Dolls: C5, 11pm, 10 October.

One of the best things about having a psychology degree is being able to watch cheap, exploitative television programs about sub-groups and doing so with a clean conscience.

Psychologists probably have a word for that type of behaviour.

They doubtless also have a term for the behaviour of the men featured in C5’s ‘extraordinary people’ series, which focussed on four men and their special relationships.

With life-size dolls.

But let’s not rush to mock these guys. Let’s take a leisurely approach and gradually poke fun over a 1500-word article.

As anyone who’s gone through a dry spell knows, finding that special partner can sometimes be tricky. So thank God for the Californian dream factory pimping out the pumped-up women for those fellas struggling to find love and companionship with ‘organic’ women.

The program focussed on a series of American men and their real-life Barbies but, before us Brits get too smug, they also had a Dorset local on there. Although the individual circumstances of each man were presented in turn, parallels could be drawn between all four: an almost morbid fear of being alone, issues over control and reliability in a relationship, and a perceived incapability of living up to the expectations of women.

The oddly named Davecat featured first. Davecat still lives with his parents, which he found a little embarrassing, unlike his predilection for his blow up beau Sidore. Being a mid-western American, Davecat’s father was obviously not tolerant enough to accept his son’s relationship with Polythene Pam and considered it ‘unnatural and strange’. Clashes would often occur and, as a consequence, Sidore spent 99.9% of her time in Davecat’s room. But then you wouldn’t think there’d be much point in Davecat’s mom setting her daughter-in-law a place at the dinner table.

Davecat’s plastic fetish had started at an early age after his mother had taken him to a downtown store and found him talking to a mannequin with a tennis skirt. He admired their "beauty and stoicism" and sense of being "incorruptible".

But that’s not to say he hadn’t had a bloody good go at corrupting his latest.

To start with, his relationship with Sidore had been "sex, sex, sex", but had tapered off to just laying close by and appreciating her. Davecat had made half-hearted attempts with ‘organic’ women but had been unable to tolerate the "lack of constancy", unlike his situation with Sidorie. She was like an anchor, unlike real women, which was not surprising as being an inanimate object means a plastic doll has a lot in common with other inanimate objects.

However, he faced an impending separation from his love as she needed repairs after going all loose and floppy over the years (it’ll happen to you at some point, Davecat). Sidore would be away for three weeks which was the longest they’d been apart. Being alone was something he didn’t want to think about, although if he known the man he’d entrusted his true love to then their time apart would be even more unsettling, although perhaps not as much as the "second honeymoon" he’d promised Sidore on her return...

As soon as the camera panned around 50-year old computer technician’s Evarard’s house, you could see he had a thing for models, and this was before we’d come face-to-face with his lovers. Model airplanes hung from the ceiling, demonstrating that the man was clearly a dab hand at patching things up with an Airfix kit.

The production team had obviously arrived early at Evarard’s house as ‘Virginia’ was sleeping when they got there, but this wasn’t too inconvenient once he changed her eyes from the sleeping set to the awake ones. Everard cooed as he described how she just lay there and was so "very static" and didn’t move at all, but that was unsurprising considering Virginia was made out of plastic. And she had her closed eyes in.

The nearest he’d got to a girlfriend was a wren from the Royal Navy who’d taken dance lessons and was "quite fit" although, ever the fetishist, he was disappointed she didn’t wear the uniform when he met her. Evarard didn’t go into the specifics as to why the wren had flown, but had some generalisations as to why women don’t flock to him. He considered attractive women to be "unattainable", perceived himself as an "outsider" and that all women reacted negatively to him before he’d even said anything. Which is just as well if decided to enter into a conversation about the tricky subject of his alternative lifestyle.

To counter the negative perceptions Everard had taken up hang-gliding to distinguish him from the common man on the street, with the expectation that women would be naturally attracted to guys who do exciting things, although this hadn’t worked out either. If you ask me, he was going about it the wrong way: if he wanted to demonstrate his alpha maleness he should have casually slipped into the conversation that he was currently living with a couple of beautiful models.

As with Davecat, Everard was keen to stress the companionship angle to his latex loves. His mother had died eleven years ago and he’d clearly been unable to grieve and move on from his loss. Admitting that it "doesn’t make sense when your mother dies" he said he’d "probably" prefer it if he had a real woman in his life, but "sooner the dolls than no female company at all".

As he poignantly, if a tad self-pityingly, put it:

"I’m 50 years old. Losing my hair. I’ll never get a real woman that would look like this [his model]. A real doll will love me, no matter what."

So despite the subject matter, the program had been able to engender some sympathy for these lost souls.

Until it came to Gordon.

If anyone in the program met most people’s stereotype of a sex-doll user it was him.

Although his issues over control and dependency were similar to the others, his was the most misogynistic attitude of the featured men, and considered sleeping with a woman who’d had the audacity to have intercourse with another man before him as "like going to a restaurant and being served regurgitated meat".

His biological father had left him after six months and he’d been raised by his mother in Virginia (the place, not Evarard’s partner). Perhaps as a consequence of this Gordon was quick to emphasise the transitory nature of human relationships ("how many friends do you have from when you’re five or six years old?") and how it influenced his preference for plastic.

But leaving aside Gordon’s early attachment difficulties, his experiences in adult life had reinforced his preference for inanimate companions. He’d met a woman at a party and despite his perceived unattractiveness ("bad skin, bad teeth") had gotten talking to her and passed on his number. A couple of weeks later she called to ask him over to her place. To babysit while she went out with another man. Wicked, wicked woman!

Gordon had taken this rather hard, although he was at least able to look on the bright side by reflecting on the money he’d save at Christmas by not having to buy her any presents.

Perturbed by the unpredictability of human relationships, Gordon no longer had to worry about "lies and deceit" with his dolls, which gave him peace of mind.

Plus there were the obvious sexual advantages (no pregnancy or disease), although at least with real-life women you don’t have to take a puncture-repair kit on a date. Unless you know they cycled there.

As Jean-Luc Godard once quipped about movies, all you need is a girl and a gun, and Gordon had two of the former and three of the latter, which coupled with his Astroglide lubricant and two-handed broadsword made him his "own God" in his fantasy world. His dolls were worth everything to him, to the point he was planning on having them buried with him, although for the sake of a relatively dignified service I hope he chooses to leave his sword outside of the coffin when the time arrives.

The valley of the dolls responsible for all this latex love was situated in California, who ship around seven dolls a week worldwide. Even by their standards they had various unnatural requests to deal with, such as pregnant dolls (Gordon clearly hadn’t placed that order) or an eighty-year old doll (maybe Evarard was looking for a substitute for his mother). One had even asked for pubic hair going up to the belly button and the lower back, although they’d refused this request on the grounds they "had to draw the line somewhere". However, that didn’t stop them from sending the customer the pubic hair necessary for some DIY doll-work.

Doll creator Matt was flattered his creations were able to fill such an emotional space in the lives of his customers, considering the dolls to function like insoles function in shoes. For those guys incapable of talking to girls, opined Matt, "sex with a rubber doll is better than never having sex at all". Which all us guys would agree with. Wouldn’t we?!

Sharing a similar tenuous grip on reality was Slade, who was the maintenance man when the dolls needed their annual service. Some of Slade’s work were minor things such as replacing teeth. Or vaginal lips. In fact the model he was working on at that moment had what looked like to him as a "destroyed vagina". Of particular concern to Davecat, considering he was repairing Sidore, was Slade’s confession that he’d had sex with a couple of the dolls entrusted to his care. The bounder!

But just to prove the show was giving an equal platform for both men and women to demonstrate their psychological flaws, on came Slade’s girlfriend Rebecca. Unbelievably, she had been jealous of the dolls when she first started dating him, feeling intimidated by what she perceived to be their "physical perfection". However, as time passed she had gotten over this jealous phase, seeing the dolls as just "a very high form of masturbation".

Which is where Mike came in.

As the only man featured who was bridging the gap between fantasy and reality by having sexual contact with a real life woman, and perhaps not coincidentally, Mike was pretty upfront about his dolls functioning as an outlet for his 3am hard-ons. Unlike other guys who had Harleys, sex was his hobby, and the dolls provided sexual outlets for Mike, the latex Lou Bega, who even had his own eight-woman harem of individually named honeys:

A little bit of Wendy in his life
A little bit of Sandy by his side
A little bit of Misty’s all he’d need
A little bit of Christy’s what he see
A little bit of Jazzy in the sun
A little bit of Lexy, his number 1.

Trumpet!

Complicating matters for Mike was his burgeoning relationship with Texan lovely Jodie and the realisation that although sex with the dolls "can be awesome, [they] provide zero companionship". Jodie seemed admirably open-minded about Mike’s activities, but as she had met him via the Internet and he turned out not to be a serial killer then she’d probably consider his doll fetish as a bit of a result.

Mike saw the possibility of wedding bells and used his birthday as an opportunity for Jodie to ‘meet the prosthetics’ leading to a particularly memorable exchange as Jodie met his harem for the first time:

Jodie: Do you use all eight?
Mike: No. Just one at a time!
Jodie: I need a beer!

Jodie liked the fact that he’d opened up to her and took his doll fetish as just being a part of who he is, but if she ever found out he preferred sex with dolls over women she’d "break it off" (I don't think she was referring to his penis..." as she requires more at this point in her life.

So a happy ending. Or perhaps not.

A week after the birthday surprise, Jodie decided to end it. But then she’d probably found out the truth about the kind of man who has sex with inflatable dolls.

They’re notorious for letting their women down.