By Jeremy Clay

When Calum Best first wheedled his way on to our screens in ITV's moronic Celebrity Love Island, he arrived armed with his own catchphrase.

"It's all good," he'd say, repeatedly, as the waves lapped the tropical shores while Sophie Anderton sobbed and Paul Danan tried to mount a lump of driftwood.

It turns out Best wasn't exactly telling the truth. It's not all good. Far from it, judging by Brought Up By Booze (10.45pm, BBC1).

In this frank film made for Children in Need, Best explored a gloom world of kids with alcoholic parents.

There were morose tales of early deaths, of self-harm and of floors strewn with empty bottles.

He met a teenager who remembered her steaming drunk dad bursting into her primary school Nativity just in time for the final bow, shouting "That's my girl up there," before collapsing to the floor. Another's childhood had been a blur of moonlight flits from homes, to escape landlords demanding the rent money her mum kept blowing on drink.

Any publishers watching will be heartened to know the next generation of misery memoirs are incubating away just fine.

But it was Best's own story which left the deepest impression.

It also made you look afresh at a bloke we'd only known as model-bedding himbo who slip-streamed his father's celebrity, and whose standards are so snake-bum low he once made a reality show where he tried to give up sex for 50 days.

Here was reality of an infinitely harsher kind, life as the son of Britain's most famous alcoholic.

While strangers in pubs killed George Best with kindness, by buying him one more for the road to ruin, Calum was left to carry his father home from the pub.

Calum took a trip to Manchester. He was 11 when he'd visited for the first time. His dad brought him to Old Trafford, and he got a shirt with Best on the back.

Afterwards, the two of them went back to the hotel. Some of George's pals came too. They sat in the bar drinking, while Calum kicked a ball about in the lobby.

At some point, George and his pals disappeared. Eventually Calum went to bed. George didn't show up until the following evening.

Then there was the time Calum had flown in from LA to see his dad. He was 15. George came lurching towards him, his breath thickened by yet another bender, and yelled "You're not my kid," then pinned him against the wall and punched him to the ground. Yeah, nice to see you too, Dad.

Brought Up By Booze ended in a rehab centre in Wiltshire.

Calum had gone along with some questions about the impact of alcoholism on addicts' children.

He ended up in an impromptu therapy session. That's when the tears came. At the outset, they'd have seemed like celebrity tears, a counterpart of crocodile tears.

It's a measure of the effectiveness of this film that they seemed genuine.