NOELINE DONAHER, who with her family was featured in the real-life

soap Sylvania Waters, says she considered suicide when she saw how the

programmes had been edited to give a distorted picture.

At the Edinburgh Television Festival, under the somewhat inappropriate

title of No Regrets, she attacked the makers of the co-production for

the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

''I have just spent the last 15 months working out that if I committed

suicide or walked away from my beautiful family, leaving my husband, it

would have been easier for them to handle,'' she said.

With her husband, Laurie, she claimed the documentary, filmed at their

home on the outskirts of Sydney, had destroyed their lives by depicted

them as vulgar, racist, drunken materialists.

''The editing was cruel and vicious,'' she said.''

Director of the series Paul Hill said they had tried to be responsible

in their editing.