Trouble with cutting a successful path through the TV jungle is that pretty soon you find that you've got a lot of company in what was, until so recently, a broadcasting wilderness. With his previous show, TV Nation, and now with his latest Channel 4 series, Michael Moore: The Awful truth, Michael Moore must be either irked or flattered that his TV Tricks now crop up so frequently elsewhere.

Not only does Dennis Pennis toss awkward questions at unsuspecting celebrities but Channel 4's Mark Thomas, like Moore, taunts fatcats who he feels are doing the dirty on the common man.

One advantage Moore has over these two is that he's very hard to miss in a crowd. It's not the trademark baseball cap that makes Moore stand out, so much as the fact the he looks like he could be the son of Doberman, From Sgt. Bilko's motor pool. The downside is that it's difficult for Moore to disguise himself for the sake of an elaborate trap - unlike, say, that other TV prankster, Chris Morris.

Another difference between Morris and Moore: Morris sets up his prank to mock the mighty purely for satirical pleasure. The pointlessness is what makes them so delicious. But Moore likes to have a moral purpose, which can force him to walk a tightrope between being a hard cheese and being just cheesy.

His skill is pulling off the tele- visual trick of playing David against Goliath without coming across as a smug git. This may be because his stunts come across as playground dares. Getting a bunch of people to dress up as witch-hunting New-England pilgrims straight out of The Crucible, and them to mock -chastise the US Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr as he walks out of his front door on his way to the office for being a pornographer (a pornographer, moreover, who has spent $50 million of tax payers' money pursuing a grudge), is making a point about Starr's mental sickness and the absurdity of American politics; but it is also a student Rag Week stunt, something you'd dare only do for a bet, or for a television camera.