Out of My Depth, ITV1

Judging by this saga of Amanda’s five-week crash course in midwifery, the aim was to produce something more along the lines of "I hadn't a clue what I was doing at first, but luckily I got the hang of it in the end”. At first we saw Holden having a cup of tea in her agreeably-appointed home in Surrey, chatting with her mother about the task that lay ahead. Would it be appropriate to wear her Jimmy Choos in the delivery room, she wondered facetiously? Mum advised against it.

Perhaps as part of a cunning plan, Holden artfully set herself up as the epitome of the bubble-headed showbiz nincompoop. Her own experience of childbirth had been the birth of her daughter Lexi by Caesarean section, which had been straightforward and painless. She'd got herself all made up for the occasion. "I felt like I was in a film!" she twittered.

But she harboured doubts about doing this midwife thing, though obviously not enough to stop her accepting such an inviting commission for prime-time TV.

“I don’t want to let myself down,” she frowned, but you’d have thought it was the mothers-to-be who ought to have been at the head of the not-being-let-down queue. “I don’t want them just to think ‘oh, it’s her off the telly’,” she fretted, apparently in earnest. But what else should they think? “Thank heavens! It’s the internationally-acclaimed obstetrician Professor Holden, just in the nick of time!” perhaps. Or "it's a celebrity, get them out of here."

Seasoned medical professionals were on hand to make sure that Holden wasn't able to run amok with dangerous drugs or scary medical instruments with arcane names. Consultant midwife Pippa Nightingale of the West Middlesex hospital exuded an aura of unflashy competence, and told Holden matter-of-factly to stop behaving like a TV presenter. "She's not the centre of attention, the woman is," she told us. I'd love to have heard her uncensored opinion of the whole project.

Yet, even though Holden seemed never to have considered that newborn babies can sometimes die and was visibly shaken by the blood and screaming that accompany childbirth, she applied herself to her unfamiliar tasks diligently enough to master some of the basic skills, and even won praise from the experts for her handling of a simulated childbirth.

But any serious intent behind the film was secondary to its status as a tributary of ITV's sprawling reality TV delta. This became plain when Amanda had to return to her Britain's Got Talent duties, having waited in vain for expectant mother Kelly to go into labour so she could assist at a real-life birth. She invited the midwives to hang out backstage with herself and Piers Morgan, before joining the audience to watch the show.

At last Kelly did go into labour, but by then Amanda had jetted off to the USA for a few days on another job. Whizzing back on an early flight to Heathrow, a bleary Holden dashed to the hospital and rushed to Kelly's bedside, but her role was reduced to supplying soothing banter while the professionals handled what turned out to be a tricky, hazardous birth. There must be some good jokes in here somewhere about how many celebrities it takes to deliver a baby. Like, preferably none.