CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Archaeologists examining the bones of a Celtic princess on BBC’s Digging For Britain

Trench for Britain

Valuation: ****

Romantic trip

Valuation: ****

people don’t change. As different as the technology was 2,000 years ago in the Iron Age, vain people loved a fashionable diet just as much as they do today.

While examining the bones of a Celtic princess unearthed by archaeologists in a Dorset village on Digging For Britain (BBC2), Professor Alice Roberts discovered signs of malnutrition.

The noblewoman, who died around the age of 25, was buried with her riches, including a lustrous bronze mirror and a colored glass bead. Their wealth was so conspicuous that historians believe their tribe, the Durotriges, were matriarchal – ruled by their royal ladies.

This princess was too posh for her five a day. She ate a diet of meat and milk and appeared to eat no fruit or vegetables. . . and therefore suffered from scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency that left her with weakened bones.

Professor Alice Roberts (pictured) takes viewers on a historical journey through the Iron Age in a Dorset village in Digging for Britain

Nowadays, people who eat a low-carb, high-protein diet can also suffer from vitamin C deficiency. It’s bizarre to think that after all these centuries of progress, we’re still capable of making ourselves sick for fashion reasons.

Prof. Alice’s sacrifices for the gods of fashion are less dangerous. When she first visited the Durotriges dig 13 years ago, she was blonde. Now her hair is pastel pink.

It has a lively twist that helps bring history across all eras to life. At a Roman dig at Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, she commented on the elegant military brooches and hairpins: “The quality suggests some very well dressed Romans.”

And at Cookham on the Thames, where an Anglo-Saxon monastery has been excavated, she described the series of hearths and ovens as “a medieval Greggs establishment”.

In the former Royal Mint in the Tower of London, her imagination came to life. On the walls of the office hung garish paintings of avenging angels and tormented devils, an unsubtle reminder of the eternal punishment that awaited anyone who tried to take advantage of the king.

The professor (pictured) visited the former Royal Mint in the Tower of London

Prof. Alice looked up at St. Michael with his scales of justice and shuddered. The mere thought of royal wrath made her sweat, she said.

Even the king’s mint masters (yes, that’s a word) worked up a sweat pounding precious metals into coins. Working on the furnace bellows was such hot work that each man was allowed ten liters of beer a day. That must have caused runaway waist inflation.

We learned how, despite the threat of eternal damnation, Henry VIII undermined the entire English economy by ordering cheap copper to be mixed with the silver of his coins.

A quick guide for Tudor counterfeiters followed, showing how easy it was to mint counterfeit coins using a fire, tongs and a hammer. This is what quantitative easing must have looked like in the 16th century.

Prof. Alice called it “cheating on an industrial scale”.

Technology has evolved, but the human motives remain the same in heist sitcom Romantic Getaway (Sky Comedy). Your heart might sink at the casting: stars Romesh Ranganathan and Katherine Ryan are in every discussion game and celebrity quiz, no matter what channel you’re watching.

Romesh Ranganathan and Katherine Ryan star in heist sitcom Romantic Getaway on Sky Comedy

But as actors, they’re fiercely competitive, pushing each other for bigger laughs. They create believable chemistry as a naïve and clumsy couple who can’t resist the temptation to cheat their boss out of half a million pounds in bitcoin.

Johnny Vegas is hilarious as a smug, drunk bully who throws tantrums when his employees treat themselves to a pack of cookies from petty cash, but can’t imagine they would try to steal his fortune.

The story is strong, the gags are good and honestly I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.