By Sian Brewis

One of the criteria for getting a place at Diana Athill's exclusive OAP home in north London is that you must have had an interesting life. By that measure, the author and publisher would have had no problems.

Her conversation crackles with opinions, stories, and episodes from her own life, told with a frankness which could be shocking.

Imagine: Growing Old Disgracefully (BBC One, 10.35pm) was a charming, funny portrait of a woman who at 92 seems to have more oomph than people half her age.

"Isn't it sad there are no men?" she remarks to another resident at the demanding care home.

"They say men do come and look around but they see a daunting mass of old women..."

Diana, you see, likes men. A lot. She spent her 30s and 40s having a series of torrid affairs, recording everything in her memoirs in unsparing, unflinching detail.

Her first love, Paul, ditched her by letter two years into their engagement. "I didn't expect a great deal from men from then on."

So she started affairs with married men. "I had a very high time in my 40s," she recalls.

"Being the other woman suited me so well."

These days, at the home, she contents herself with chatting to friends, writing, and reading Chekov in her small room.

She has kept a driving licence and drives herself to a regular life drawing class. She is clearly a woman who pays attention to her looks: nearly every shot has her immaculately turned out.

There are also the talks. She has cornered the market in literary debates about being old. At Bath literature festival she charms the crowds within minutes and the whole programme made you want to read one of her books.

During her publishing career she worked with VS Naipaul – "really quite awful" – as well as Jean Rhys, whom she helped write Wide Sargasso Sea.

"She needed a great deal of looking after," remarks Diana.

She used to think she had achieved nothing in life: "Now, when I look back – would you believe it – it was nothing of the sort."

Does anyone wanting to start a new life in the country ever manage to do it without going massively over budget? Caroline and Dave ran out of cash half way in.

Build a New Life in the Country – Was It Worth It? (Five, 8pm) showed the answer was a resounding ''yes'' – at least for the children.

The youngsters show Charlie Luxton their pigs: "That one is Hot Dog, that's Bacon the one with the sticky-up ears is Crackling," they sing.