Robot Wars and Animal Hospital

Friday night television when you get back after what could have been a heavy evening out on the town - there really is nothing better: meaningless drivel that instigates boundless philosophical conversations between drunken people who have absolutely no intention of going to bed until they are sick: in a word, fantastic. (If I was to grant myself another word, I'd take "liberating", but that is another story for another day.)

Take Baywatch - brilliant. There are attractive women in bikinis for the men and fit six-pack possessing men for the women (vice versa if that's the way you happen to swing). Superficially speaking, you can't beat it, but entertainment wise, look no further than Robot Wars.

Now I know it hasn't been the same since Phillipa Forrester left some time ago and that blonde floozy took her place, but I beg you to look past that and stay with me here - as far as entertainment goes, it's unsurpassable: mindless violence, willing destruction and some bloke shouting so much you'd be forgiven for thinking he's a long way away. All this and it leads to the best discussions when you're drunk.

For example, take the conversation discussing the best design for a robot - just a couple of Friday's ago, a few friends and myself were talking about this very subject, finally deciding it would be best to make a robot with a drill - that way it could penetrate the other robot's outer shields and damage all of their circuitry, meaning they could continue no further. (This was preferred to the idea of an incendiary device, which, although only able to be used once, would blow up the other robot and be a lot more fun). It was then suggested that instead of having just the robot, you could perhaps make a robot with a transparent shell so that you could place your pet cat or hamster inside it and look at how it reacts - that way you could interest the poor little kids that get dragged along by their engineery-type fathers. So instead of Robot Wars you could have Pet Animals In Robot Wars.

Then, of course, the natural progression would be to do away with the remote controlled and battery powered robots and instead replace the power with the pet; for instance, you could have two (non-smoking) hamsters running around in hamster wheels moving the robot over the arena floor. All you'd need a human for would be to activate the weapons. The only problem with this would be that fatalities would probably occur - imagine if we had the drilling weapon mentioned earlier...all it would take is one unfortunate 'spearing' and you'd have a dead hamster on your hands.

Although, since we're on the BBC here, we could always combine a Pet Animals In Robot Wars programme with an Animal Hospital - Robot Wars Casualties Special couldn't we? Imagine, Rolf Harris would come on, talk in his strangely soothing Antipodean accent and go "...do you remember little Fluffy the hamster who was so horribly pierced by a drill on last week's show? Well, we'll let you know how he's getting on in just a little while"...and then it would go on to Dave the guinea pig who was set on fire by one of the flame-throwers during a particularly violent final battle in which a goldfish was somehow swallowed by a homing pigeon. Then it could go on to Harold the cat who so unfortunately broke his leg having being catapulted 30 feet into the air by a notably fierce house robot. You could also have the particularly moving story of the six-year old owner of Snowy the rabbit who, having seen her pet rabbit minced by a vicious metal contraption, decided to forget about animals and concentrate on her diet of anti-depressants instead.

...all this and then you'd have Rolf coming back on saying; "and by the way, Fluffy's dead".

You don't need Paul Weller to tell you that's entertainment. If you see it on the BBC, not only should you be surprised, but you should also remember you saw it here first.