Some golden oldies

Happy Birthday Elizabeth - A Celebration of Life (Pearl, 10.45am) is not another of those awful so-called documentaries about the British Royal family TVB seems so keen on (that is tomorrow's treat).

Rather, it is a glittery, star-studded excuse to pay tribute to Elizabeth Taylor on her 65th birthday on February 27, 1997.

Taylor managed to remain one of the world's most beautiful women well into her 50s, but finally the effect of constant illness, misfortune, various kinds of substance abuse and multiple bad marriages have taken their toll and she looks her age, if not older.

If you can face the likes of Michael Jackson, Madonna and Rod Stewart before lunch, then the musical interludes in this morning's show will please you. And if you are a Taylor fan, the footage in between from her life and movies, some of it touted as 'never seen before', will do the same.

Taylor's life has always been more dramatic than even the best of her movies, and she still appears in the gossip columns regularly. Sometimes the rumours contradict one another. One of the latest has her in hospital again with a recurrence of her back trouble. The influential New York columnist Liz Smith has suggested she is flat on her back for another reason: she has started dating again, with Rod Steiger.

Davy Jones, who stars in tonight's episode of The Single Guy (Pearl, 6.50pm) may well be famous for something other than his contribution to the Monkees, but if so, it has not made much of an impression. It was not a huge surprise when he and the other three Monkees, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz began touring as the Monkees again.

Jones spent most of the intervening years appearing in middle-of-the-road rock musicals. Tork ended up teaching maths and social science, and - perhaps in an effort to keep up his rock-star image - spent time in jail on a drugs conviction, while Dolenz went into television advertising. Needless to say, most of them were pretty keen to revive the Monkee heydays.