Oh you are Eiffel but I love you…

Truth, Lies, Oil And Scotland, BBC1

I IMAGINE that Five executives spend most of their time trawling weird websites looking for programme ideas. The current Strangelove series probably came about after a random Google search of "sex + metal + bonkers".

This week, in Strangelove: Married To The Eiffel Tower, it pointed its prying cameras into the troubled minds of some "objectum sexuals" who had formed loving, intimate relationships with popular tourist attractions. Just when you think you've got some vague handle on the crazy vagaries of human sexuality, Five comes along and sniggers in your stunned, disbelieving face.

Right from the start, the programme seemed like a spoof report from The Day Today. Standing wistfully in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, Naisho announced that "despite our vast differences, we are very much in love". The bridge kept quiet in that way bridges tend to. This former world champion archer had enjoyed previous affairs with a crossbow and a sword, which could at least be conducted indoors. Asking the Golden Gate Bridge to come back to your place is a bit trickier.

Naisho regularly made love to a piece of metal stolen from the bridge. Fortunately we were spared this spectacle, although she was filmed getting hot and heavy with a length of fencing. Just as I wondered what kind of emotional scarring had occurred in her life to prompt such a condition, Naisho revealed that she had been serially abused as a child. Like her beloved Berlin Wall, she felt she'd been torn apart by the people who built her.

There are only about 40 reported cases of objectum sexuality in the world, all of them women. It was obvious that unhappy souls such as Naisho didn't like themselves very much, and felt more secure conducting a deluded romance with an object that would never hurt or leave them. The similarly traumatised Amy was repulsed by the idea of sex between humans, preferring to find love in the imagined arms of a reliable building. Unfortunately, she had chosen the World Trade Centre.

Such was Naisho's infatuation with the Eiffel Tower, she eventually married it. No, I didn't know that was possible either. But despite her French wife, Naisho was convinced that her San Franciscan fancy-bridge was in love with her too. Objectum sexuals talk to the objects of their desire, who reply in turn via telepathy. Naturally, they always tell them what they want to hear. Ultimately, I learned little about Naisho and her fellow sufferers other than that they were obviously lonely, damaged women in need of urgent psychological assistance. Still, at least Five did the decent thing and made a programme about them for us all to gawp at.

In Truth, Lies, Oil And Scotland, BBC Scotland's business correspondent Hayley Millar revealed that the country makes more money from supplying the world's most sought-after resource than Kuwait. But still it's difficult to think of it as an oil nation.

And what of those worrying rumours about the oil running out? According to Millar's findings, there are at least 25 billion barrels left in the North Sea, which refutes the notion that rocketing oil prices are a result of panic over supply shortages. At times, the programme seemed like an advert on behalf of the oil industry: "Don't worry, everyone, it's fine."

Millar and her oil men built a fairly convincing case for Scotland as one of the most economically important countries in the world. Which must be of tremendous comfort to its countless strugg-ling citizens.