Losing It BBC2, 9pm
Sub-titled "Griff Rhys Jones on anger," Losing It was a frank confessional documentary about the chuckly-faced TV funnyman whose unsuppressed off-screen ire has made everyday life near-unbearably tense and miserable for those closest to him, family and workmates alike.
For when it comes to losing it, Griff hasn't done the job by halves these past 30 years.
His one-time agent and personal assistant recollected her first day in his employment. Griff had stormed in, maddened by his own foul mood, promptly kicking a hole in his office's door. He had no memory of the incident whatsoever.
"I would be used as blotting paper," his ex-employee continued, summarising her fearful working life over the next 15 years. "It's a burden, having somebody off-load something like that."
Griff's teenage children wryly mocked their dad's wrathful propensity for muttering to himself and pacing around whenever thwarted or baffled by life's overwhelming horrors, such as malfunctioning computers or unforeseen delays.
His sister recalled him, in his twenties, throwing a full-blown two-year-old toddler's tantrum at the prospect of a bad review of a stage show he was involved in. "He lay on the floor, banging his feet and fists," she stated.
Throughout these and many other revelations of a rage-powered life, Griff's face bore a genuine look of shock, mystification, shame and dismay. He also sounded a little annoyed, but thankfully reined it in for Losing It's cameras.
Those same cameras just failed to record a fresh instance of his mindless and foul-mouthed vituperation - although in the immediate aftermath of the incident on a narrow central London street, they did capture some amused scaffolders in high-vis jackets who'd been on the receiving end of Griff's tirade.
The scaffies were milling around in a thrilled daze, talking on their mobiles, telling their pals that yon pillock Griff Rhys Jones off the telly had just gone explosively mental after scraping a huge and expensive dent into one of his car's rear doors against one of their bits of kit. They would have moved it for him if only he'd asked, instead of needlessly ploughing on like an eejit, in a self- created blizzard of swearing and mangled metal.
It was around here that Griff's attitude to his own anger began to change. Until this point, he'd insisted that venting one's fury was a healthy, natural and harmless human reaction.
Raging Griff was actually Stress-Reliever Griff, merely letting off steam; indulging in creative ranting. His ill temper was an uncontrollable function of age; an inevitable consequence of stress. No blame to be attached.
Fellow celebrity anger-addicts proffered their own singular confessions. BBC arts correspondent Rosie Millard admitted to shaking, uttering irrational statements and smashing plates when dealing with her four young children.
Chemistry-lab chef Heston Blumenthal once forced another man's van on to the kerb with his car, denting it, and forcing the other driver to run away in terror. He vowed to change his ways.
Ditto Griff, distressed to realise that his one-time PA/agent had dreaded his torrid turns for years.
Setting up next week's concluding instalment of Losing It, Griff pledged to calm his inchoate rage by recourse to everything from Buddhist meditation to boxing and anger-management classes in LA.
You fear for these cures' efficacy if Griff has to drive past scaffolding to get to any of them, mind.
