The poor are always with us. They are certainly with Sister Rita Lee, the indefatigable septuagenarian nun who runs the Lalley Welcome Centre in unlovely Collyhurst, Manchester. More to the point, Sister Rita is with the poor.

In Sister Rita to the Rescue (31 October-4 November), a second series of her very own daytime docusoap, we saw her battling hard for the long-term unemployed and walking wounded of the district. She knows and loves these people: she first arrived in Manchester in 1965 from Ireland to join the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

It was chastening to watch her counselling, cajoling, browbeating, encouraging and supporting her impoverished neighbours. At the same time, the programme was edited to suggest that she is not averse to fame.

“They don’t call me the formidable Sister Rita for nothing,” she announced at the start of the series, which ran every day this week at 9.15 a.m.