I wouldn't care to be trapped inside the mind of Gary Glitter, real name Paul Gadd, the washed-up glam rocker and banged-up paedophile who served three years in a Vietnamese prison for having sex with underage girls -- or children, to use the correct term.

I imagine it's a murky, morally warped environment where the wearing of galoshes is advisable.

Equally, though, I wouldn't care to be trapped inside the mind of Rob Coldstream, the writer, producer and director of The Execution of Gary Glitter, an elaborate fantasy docudrama that counts as one of the most bizarre, barking mad programmes ever transmitted -- even by the standards of Channel 4, which has form on this kind of thing (remember The Assassination of George W Bush?)

Apparently, 54pc of Britons are in favour of reintroducing the death penalty. I'm not sure if a survey result actually qualifies as a fact, but Coldstream took this information and welded it to a piece of extremely dubious futureshock fiction.

Invention

Set in an alternative Britain in which the death penalty has been reintroduced for murderers and rapists of children under 12, the programme imagines Glitter being executed by hanging under a new law -- more invention on the writer's part -- that allows offenders to be tried in a British court for crimes committed overseas.

Coldstream, who would appear not to be a supporter of capital punishment, is on the record as saying that he simply wanted to make a thought-provoking drama about the issue. If so, there are far better ways to do it than this.

It has to be said that The Execution of Gary Glitter was fiercely well-produced -- though there was a lapse of accuracy in having Glitter's solicitor doubling up as his barrister.

Kudos, too, to Hilton McRae, who caught Glitter's voice and mannerisms with uncanny accuracy. If this had been a straightforward drama about the real Glitter case, he'd probably be in line for a Bafta nomination at the very least.

The mock interviews with talking heads, including right-wing former Sun columnist Garry Bushell -- whose past outpourings in print suggest he'd happily knot the noose if the death penalty really was reintroduced -- and the daft-as-a-brush Ann Widdecombe going on about how "paedophilia is rampant", also gave the programme a sheen of authenticity that would almost fool the casual viewer into thinking they were looking at a documentary.

However, Coldstream's efforts to make a fictional TV drama that looked like a facsimile of fact resulted in some queasy moments. In the alternative 'history' presented here, we were told the death penalty had been reintroduced because of the outcry following the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by Ian Huntley in Soham in 2002.

No one has any sympathy for Gary Glitter (expect perhaps Glitter himself), and presumably he won't be suing Channel 4 or Rob Coldstream for portraying him the way they did. Yet there's something nauseating about casually using the heinous, real-life murders of two innocent children as a peg on which to hang a TV drama. Deplorable.

STACEY'S STARS

The Execution of Gary Glitter *

- Pat Stacey