Bruce's all brawn; Die Hard ITV, 9.00pm - 11.00pm.

BY 1988, the world was being run from office blocks - impersonal spaces filled with artificial light and machine noises in which humans scurry like mice to make more money for someone else.

Until someone realised that, in the right circumstances, with all its spare surfaces to smash through and shoot up and slide over, an office building could become the ultimate action playground.

Then they sent Bruce Willis in like a human bomb.

People laughed when they heard that Willis had been chosen to play John McClane, the easy-going but hard-fighting cop holed up in a hijacked building without his shirt or his shoes.

He was just the clown from Moonlighting, after all.

But from his first puff on a cigarette, Willis made clear that he wasn't joking, and proceeded to muscle through some of the most brilliantly put- together and blown-apart action sequences ever seen on film.

Unlike its sequels and virtually every action movie made since, this isn't so amazing in its stunts as to become cartoonish, but so desperate and furious as to pump up a sense of true speed and real, scary danger.

Alan Rickman is cut out of cold steel in his now famous turn as the wicked Hans Gruber, and Willis got at least three dimensions out of this character McClane seems not just like a real guy but also a nice guy - before he painted himself into the hardman corner for the next ten years.

Willis has boomed and busted ever since this, but Die Hard is unimpeachable - a classic and the king of powerhouse action flicks.

(1988)

The Supreme ego has landed TFI Friday

Ch4, 6.00pm

REGAL diva Diana Ross might well have met her match tonight for the woman who thinks the world revolves around her isn't the only one with an ego the size of Heathrow Airport.

The ginger one, Chris Evans, is a bit full of himself too. So the duo should certainly get on well when she joins the Virgin FM magnate for a spot of early evening entertainment.

Not that Ms `Just call me Lady Di' Ross was exactly born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Born Diane Earl, she was the second of six children who slept three-in-a-bed with a lamp to keep the bedbugs away.

She was, however, reportedly born to be a queen, and at one point she even confessed to wanting to marry into royalty.

Born premature with ill-formed lungs, from birth to adulthood Ross's life has been one long battle to get noticed... her determination has certainly paid off.

As a solo artist, Ross was to become one of the most successful female singers of the rock era.

If you take into account her work as the lead singer of the Supremes in the 1960s, you might even rate her as the most successful.

Ross's big break came when she joined the Primettes vocal quartet in 1959 along with her friends Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Barbara Martin. In 1960 they were signed to Motown Records and changed their name to the Supremes.

For a time the Supremes even rivalled the Beatles in terms of red-hot commercial appeal, reeling off five number one singles in a row at one point, even though their success was not overnight.

When Martin left the Supremes, the group continued as a trio for the next eight years and scored 12 number one pop hits. After their last one, Someday We'll Be Together, however, Ross decided to go it alone and quit to launch her solo career.

Also on the show are Joanna Lumley, Simply Red and Baby Spice Emma Bunton who will be performing the cover version of What I Want with Tin Tin Out.