Dialogue: Bad dose of narcolepsy caught from the telly

By GORDON McLAUGHLAN

Looked up the other night at television and there was a turnip with a face painted on it talking to a mop. I thought it was a new animated Disneyland feature. But the participants weren't animated in that other sense of the word. They seemed to be having a lethargic argument in which the turnip declared war on the mop.

Close scrutiny revealed it was dizzier even than Disney. It was David Tua and Lennox Lewis, both woefully under-rehearsed, labouring through childish patter about their forthcoming world title fight. What, I asked myself, has happened to my beloved sweet science?

I thought of the extraordinary panache and style of the original Sugar Ray Robinson, who started his professional life busking as a tap-dancer in Times Square and, several hundred fights later, as an old man in boxing terms, took on a British middleweight for a world title comeback. He was told by an interviewer that their punches had been measured electronically and his was slower than his opponents. Did that worry Sugar Ray?

"I don't care how long it takes," he drawled, "just so long as it gets there." And it did.

Then I thought of all those dazzling athletes who fought the great gladiatorial professional bouts in the golden days of boxing, right up to Mohammed Ali, still a man of wit and flair.

And what we have now is a bemused mop fighting a taciturn turnip. And a turnip who has claimed his left hook is a God-given gift which seems to bring God into the face-smashing business.

By the way, you can travel to the mop-turnip fight, attend the official weigh-in, dine with the turnip and attend the after-fight function where big-name celebrities are tipped to be attending for only $5000, according to a press release that slipped past my e-mail guard on Thursday.

Not me, mate. I didn't take that many punches. (I wonder what the small-name celebrities will be doing afterwards?)

That was a low point in a week notable for its sleep-inducing television. It began with deep-coma cricket from Harare. I've seen faster games of Ludo in old people's homes than the New Zealand-Zimbabwe test. After 10 minutes of watching, I was wrapped in the gentle arms of Morpheus.

Management saved me. She was in the kitchen when she heard Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z begin to drown out the phrase "maiden over." She rushed in, shook me violently (taking, I felt, more pleasure from that than was proper) and dragged me away from the set.

I think Mugabe's war veterans should have stormed the ground and given it back to the people for useful productivity. They'd have had to make their move before the start of play or risk nodding off during their revolution.

Next night I was feeling perky again until one of Bob McNeil's World Vision infomercials masquerading as news came on TV3. I was slipping away again into oblivion as Bob began a totally boring story entirely irrelevant to New Zealand about some Ethiopian villagers.

Management heard my yawn from the kitchen and again pulled me away from the set and revived me by slapping my face with a cold dishcloth.

I had hung on long enough to note that there was no mention of the Ethiopians invading Eritrea, so I guess it was not only Christian-sponsored non-news but very old non-news.

Next week, Bob's fronting an infomercial about a Christian-backed family building up a major begging-bowl manufacturing plant in Bangladesh. After that the Salvation Army is sending him to investigate the second-hand-furniture market in the Chatham Islands for another somnolent five-minute non-news segment.

Hoping for an intellectual challenge on Wednesday night, I decided to follow the parliamentary debate on the Singapore trade agreement. Then Jenny Shipley objected to a phrase giving special consideration for Maori that was the same as she had used herself in previous agreements but which somehow got to be wrong this year for reasons completely obscured by her soporific casuistry.

It was a bad night for TV3. A journalist reporting on the spat between Helen Clark and Shipley declared their squabble could endanger the valuable New Zealand-Singapore trade deal, obviously having missed the class at journalism school on the editorialising impact of adjectives.

I was revived briefly by a piece of genuine news that former Prime Minister of Oz Gough Whitlam knew not only that the Indonesians were to invade East Timor but exactly when and how. The legendary, caring old Aussie socialist couldn't bring himself to tell anyone in case it proved politically unhelpful to him, thus starting a tradition of moral amnesia continued by John Howard whenever he sees an Aborigine.

And then it was back to narcolepsy as the preview of the Olympics continued.

Relief is in sight, though, when the Games actually get under way. I understand Paul Holmes is hoping for a gold medal in the poll vault, or ratings jump as it is sometimes called.

What I do know is that we'll see more of him than any six gold medal winners.