THESE DAYS everyone knows someone who’s allergic — or thinks they are allergic — to something. Food intolerances pander to an innate desire to be “special”, and also to faddy diets that vilify wheat and dairy products. A perfectly normal activity like having people over for supper becomes fraught with danger — think carefully before you serve up those linguine with clams, or that chocolate mousse. Odd, though, isn’t it, how no one ever seems to be allergic to wine . . .

Of course there are people who suffer from genuine allergies but, of the 20 per cent or so of the population who claim to, when tested only 1 per cent turned out to have a genuine reaction. The rest were either imagining it or their intolerance was so mild as to be imperceptible. But for those with a genuine problem, life can be extremely difficult, not to say dangerous.

Allergic to Everything (Channel 4) was, in many ways, a standard example of scaremongering television. If it’s not the weather, or a large, festering volcano waiting to blow us back to prehistory, it’s a meteorite or a terrorist cell infiltrating our bins. In this instance, the thing to be really, really worried about was life-threatening allergic reactions, mainly in children, and mainly requiring dramatic medical intervention.

The film made much of its stated didactic purpose — to highlight the chronic lack of medical expertise available to allergy sufferers in the UK (Britain has only ten allergy professionals working in the health service, compared with 90 in Sweden and 500 in Germany, a figure that does seem woefully inadequate given the scale of the problem). But it was also laced with mawkish emotion, inevitable since all the test cases bar one involved children or babies.

The only adult, Liz — billed as “one of the most allergic women in Britain” — was a pretty archaeology student who had suffered as many as 100 anaphylactic shocks (a potentially fatal, systemic allergic reaction that can involve the respiratory tract and cardiovascular system) in the past three and a half years. Her situation was immensely distressing but she was determined not to let it limit her. Leaving for an archaeological dig with a group of complete strangers, she had to take all her own food, plus a plentiful supply of adrenalin shots. In the event of an attack, she would be relying upon one of these strangers to administer the adrenalin — not the easiest way of making friends.

The film’s other protagonists — a baby with pitifully bad eczema, brought on by lactose intolerance, an eight-year-old boy unable to eat Wotsits without swelling up (personally that seems like a perfectly acceptable reaction to Wotsits, given the chemicals they contain) and a little girl with eczema and hives were all interesting and moving cases in themselves, but they didn’t tell us much about the overall picture. Questions were raised — why, for example, does Britain have such a high instance of childhood allergies? — but no real answers offered. And no one, presumably for reasons of political correctness, pointed out the obvious, which was that at least two of the children in question were obviously eating way too much junk food. Could that have been a factor? We’ll never know.

The Great British Loser (Channel 4), presented by the former Conservative MP Michael Portillo, was one of those uncomplicated clip shows that don’t tell you much you don’t already know, but constitute a perfectly agreeable 60 minutes of entertainment. “Welcome to Britain, a nation of losers. We used to celebrate our heroes, now we venerate our zeros,” said Portillo enthusiastically, introducing the premise in a style (unintentionally?) reminiscent of Tom Baker’s opening monologue for Little Britain. Portillo’s own demise at the 1997 election was itself voted TV’s third most popular moment, as he gleefully pointed out, before explaining that the British are, as a nation, fixated with failure and suspicious of success.

A roll-call of talking heads went on to reinforce the point. Eddie the Eagle, Alan Partridge, David Brent, Basil Fawlty — they were all here. We learnt that Heat’s Jade Goody cover was their biggest-selling issue in 2002, and that Gemini, who famously scored nul points for Britain at the Eurovision song contest, were just as celebrated, if not more so, than if they had won. All of which suggests the question: if flamboyant failure is all that’s required to win this nation’s heart, then what on earth is holding the Tories back?

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010