Everyone knows that Britain's greatest machine is the chip fryer

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• After they told Golly to get stuffed ...

They were. Much. Particularly the ones that were on Crocodile Autopsy.

I have never really seen the point of crocodiles. Sure, they make a decent pair of shoes, but what else are they good for?

I remember my parents taking me to the Mitchell Park Zoo in Durban when I was a kid. For years they would regularly drag me to the crocodile enclosure where we would stand looking at an overgrown lizard for hours at a time. I never saw it move. Not ever. I would grow restless and throw stones at it. My mother would pinch me and hiss, "Just be patient. It's going to do something any minute." Well, it didn't. I grew to despise that crocodile. If that's what it was. It may have been a log painted to look like a crocodile.

So it was with some satisfaction that I watched Crocodile Autopsy. I imagined it was the one from Mitchell Park having its belly slit open and something inside me felt good. The programme blurb said: "Go beneath the skin of these giants to examine their state-of-the-art biological design." Their what? Please. They can't even pick things up with their silly little arms. They waddle like fat people and their tails are about the most ridiculous things I have ever seen. Anyway, the programme was cathartic, if nothing else.

I flicked through the schedule but the programming seemed to be on some kind of interminable loop, so there wasn't a whole lot to choose from. Air Crash Investigation sounded promising. "Find out what went wrong when flight 262 crashed into a nuclear submarine causing an atomic explosion that killed thousands of German tourists on a beach at a nearby nudist colony."

But it wasn't like that at all. There was no nudity whatsoever. Just a whole lot of simulation and precious little stimulation. Black boxes are deadly dull. Far better that cockpits are fitted with indestructible video cameras that capture the real action as the air hostesses get drunk and strip off while the pilot loses control of himself, sending the aircraft plunging into a training camp for nubile Swedish mud wrestlers. So much more entertaining than a scratchy recording of, "Tower, this is Alpha Sierra Tango, we seem to have lost power in the crackle crackle hiss BANG!"

Then I came across Britain's Greatest Machines. This showed promise. Dark humour. Bordering on satire. Everyone knows that Britain's greatest machine is the chip fryer.

A programme called Holy Cow piqued my rapidly dwindling interest. After all, I am in the business of slaughtering the dumb brutes wholesale. But my hopes were soon dashed. The programme promised a look at the cow's "remarkable physiology" and how it has "influenced human development both biologically and geographically". What next? A programme on hamsters and their role in the Industrial Revolution?

I'm sorry to be the one to say it, but these animals do not have a remarkable physiology. They have seven stomachs, which is borderline Satanic, and they regurgitate their food and chew on it all day long and then spend their nights farting worse than Amor Vittone.

As for their power to influence human development, well, let us not start giving cows ideas above their station. We really don't want to become another India. Cows belong on the braai, not nudging you off the pavement .

Just as my brain was slipping into stand-by mode, I found the programme I had been looking for. The Dark Side of Hippos. I kid you not. I hit the info button and right away adrenaline slammed its steel-capped boot into my drowsy cerebrum. "Hippos are thought of as jolly vegetarians. And yet these seemingly affable, loveable creatures are responsible for killing more people in Africa than any other animal. Find out the truth about hippos."

Good God. It was Pulp Fiction meets Natural Born Hippos. At last, a programme that exposes these cuddly mammals for the demented psychopaths that they are. With my own eyes I have seen the tragic mistakes people make. Once, visiting a game reserve, I watched an elderly pair of Norwegian bird-watchers get out of their car and try to hug a passing hippo. He certainly seemed affable and loveable to begin with, but when the woman began explaining to the hippo, in sign language, that she, too, was a jolly vegetarian, the hippo pretended to yawn and then bit her entire head off. It wasn't a pretty sight, let me tell you.

I am only sorry that I can't stay up for the sequel at 3am. It's called Hippo Hell and it sounds like a real winner.