Eric is 40, and lives in London. He is a middle class single father (divorced) with two kids and a crippling mortgage. His son is so dim he’s been kept back at school three years running. His daughter is a frail, allergy-ridden waif of six. His wife has left him for a Buddhist and his au-pair is an unreliable waster. Even the family next door are successful and wealthy, a stressful reminder of what his life could have been.

At work too, there is no respite, a series of stress related illnesses have seen him demoted from Sales through half a dozen offices to the dark, dank, wastelands of the Data Department next to the gentlemen’s lavatory.

Each week Eric faces up to the important issues that concern a single father today, from, "How do you compensate your children for the lack of a female role model?" to: "How do you ask for sex in your forties without getting arrested?"

He also tries to deal with the stressful paraphernalia of everyday life such as trying to get the cellophane off a new video and having to build a flatpack wardrobe without the intstructions.

A new series of Stressed Eric is currently in production and back on BBC2 in 2000.