I have always believed we should all earn the same as one another, with reasonable bonuses for those who do the jobs that nobody else wants to do. The huge inequalities between people's earnings underline the injustice of the present system, and we all know that the rich are getting richer. What Britain Earns (BBC2) substantiated this belief, noting that 30 years ago the highest earners were getting about nine times what ordinary employees earned but now they rake in nearly 100 times the pay of ordinary workers. The most highly-paid ten per cent take a third of the nation's pay packet. Peter Snow and his son Dan investigated the differences - from the lowest-paid, like leek pickers in Nottinghamshire who have to pick 275 leeks every hour and earn only the minimum wage, to the fat cats like traders in the money market who can get bonuses of £50,000 or more on top of salaries from £100,000 upwards.

A pay consultant tried to justify these massive earnings by saying that "these people are creating wealth and value, and improving the standard of living in the country" but it is actually the poor ruddy workers who are creating the wealth for the overpaid to cream off. Still, the programme suggested that money doesn't necessarily bring happiness, as a survey showed that the second happiest group of workers are low-paid hairdressers. Dan Snow tried out some of the jobs for himself and obviously hated working as a sewer cleaner, but the man he worked with said he wouldn't change his job for anything.

School days are proverbially the happiest days of our lives but is this true for schoolchildren in Baghdad? The Boys from Baghdad High (BBC2?) gave four teenage boys camcorders to record their experiences. The four were all friends, even though they came from different backgrounds. Ali was a Kurd, Anmar a Christian, Hayder a Shia, and Mohammad half-Sunni and half-Shia. They all seemed good-natured lads, trying to lead normal lives, but even their short journey to school was hazardous and it is hard to be motivated to study when you are surrounded by gunfire and bombings and have little hope of a stable future. Many families leave Baghdad, seeking security, and nearly a quarter of the school's 600 pupils had moved away only two months into the school year.

We may not have felt quite as unsettled as the Iraqi people but many of us were fearful at various times during the Cold War, especially when events like the Cuban missile crisis showed how the Cold War might turn into a hot war. 1983: The Brink of Apocalypse (Channel 4) traced the dangerous build-up of misunderstandings and paranoia which brought the USSR to the brink of war with NATO in 1983.

The western powers were unsettled by the Russians shooting down a Korean passenger jet. The Russians misinterpreted a NATO exercise as the prelude to a nuclear attack - a possibility increased by Reagan's macho rhetoric, calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire". Thankfully, the error was discovered just in time to stop a third world war. The programme was a valuable lesson about the flaws in any 'balance of terror', although its impact was dulled by the commentator consistently mispronouncing 'nuclear' as "nucular".

For some light relief, Barry Humphries - The Man Behind Dame Edna (Channel 4) profiled the man whose best-known creations, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, are appalling caricatures of Barry's Australian compatriots. The programme asked the question "Where have these grotesques come from?" and tried to find the answer by accompanying Barry Humphries on an Australian tour.

Barry revisited his childhood home and his school, at both of which he rebelled against "niceness". He loved his indulgent father but was less fond of his snobbish, uptight mother. There was a suspicion that his mother was the model for Dame Edna, but Barry said Edna was a composite of arty Australian ladies devoted to culture.