That's it. I've had it up to here with humanity, and intend to wreak vengeance by suing everyone on earth. Remember my small claims court action against the C of E (on the grounds that, even though I'm meek, I've still not inherited the earth)? I'm taking that to the High Courts. I'll that follow that up by suing the makers of Tampax (who promised that I'd be able to swim and play tennis if I used their product, but I still can't do either), and then the handicapped motorist I saw yesterday brazenly parking his car in a non-handicap space. And finally, when I've issued writs against the entire population of the world, I'll finish off by making indecent suggestions to myself, then suing myself for sexual harassment.

Of course, a far cheaper way to annoy people is to found a single-interest pressure group, thereby assuming a permanent air of moral superiority and irritating everyone around you with your relentless proselytising. That's what most of the contributors to A Room with Two Views (BBC2) have done, taking opposing sides in heated debates about such thorny ethical issues as pornography, euthanasia, or last night's topic of vegetarianism. I gave up participating in "stimulating" discussions some years ago, immediately after I heard myself stating "well, it's all relative" at 3am, but lentil-crazed Juliet Gellatey was eager to get her teeth into meat-loving Bill Weeks in what proved to be an entertaining, though profoundly unenlightening contest. According to Hegel, the positing of thesis and antithesis leads inexorably to synthesis, but I have news for the plucky German philosopher: when Juliet and Bill started arguing, the process led inexorably to a migraine for the viewer, as both sides attempted to shout their way to intellectual victory.

Here they were, the She Woof (Weekends on Organic Farms) and The Ong (Old Northern Git) -- she with a soppy Disneyfied view of man's relationship to the animal kingdom, he with advanced halitosis of the personality and a mind stuffed so full of his own opinions that there was no room for anything else to get in. She Woof's stories about the lengthy acts of torture she'd seen in abattoirs were horrific but irrelevant (because the truly horrific thing about modern slaughterhouses is the clinical efficiency with which they butcher thousands of animals a day), but The Ong's patronising dismissal of her eye-witness accounts ("listen my dear... that's pure and unadulterated fiction") must have alienated even the most carnivorous element in the audience. Like all very unintelligent people, The Ong was a champion list-maker, treading water while thinking of the next thing to say instead of keeping quiet ("meat is produced for supermarkets - Safeway's, Sainsbury's, Asda... I eat fruit - plums, strawberries, bananas... our animals are happy - pigs, hens, sheep, cows"), and this appalling combination of condescension and stupidity ensured that, even if he'd been representing the Campaign Against Fluffy Kittens Being Strangled By Rubber-Glove-Wearing Men on Crack, I'd still have sided with the opposition.

Statistics were bandied about like legs, though She Woof made the elementary mistake of not providing sources for her figures, allowing The Ong to dismiss the claims as hearsay. She was misty-eyed, accusing farmers of being more interested in money than animal welfare (true, but haven't price-conscious consumers been colluding with them for decades?), and he was misty-brained, grotesquely referring to battery chickens crammed five to a cage as "these happy hens, they're sitting among their friends." If slaughterhouses are really such cheerful places, how come you never see them on TV, and why (uniquely amongst professions) has there still not been a drama series set in one? But then again, if you've ever seen the aftermath of a fox's visit to a flock of free range hens, you have to admit that, however they're kept, some animals are just far too tasty for their own good.

Neither She Woof nor The Ong learned anything from the debate, because both were switched to transmit. No attempt was made to find common ground, and the spectacle merely confirmed that vegetarians find meat-eaters utterly disgusting, while meat-eaters find vegetarians utterly risible. The Ong's claim that "I'm not saying I'm 100% right -- I'm probably 99.9% right" verified that he was beyond help, but She Woof's indifference to most of the human race's preference for meat and her fondness for apocalyptic hyperbole ("half of the world's oceans are on the verge of environmental collapse") suggested that her real problem is inside herself. Nevertheless, a show that generates more heat than light makes welcome viewing during the cold winter months, and this is proving to be a simply-staged but intelligently-produced series from Giles Oakley's increasingly impressive Community Programmes Unit. Indeed, it was marred only by a tragic incident at the end, when She Woof's Karma ran over The Ong's dogma. If you ask me, he should sue.