While all the news channels spew hate and blood, body parts and broken lives, there is one oasis of pure delight.

Takeshi's Castle on Pogo.

Japanese adults (i wonder what they do during the day...) dressed in their Sunday worst, try to overcome obstacles on route to Takeshi's Castle (a thermacol castle that can never, never be taken. the last bastion of the Japanese empire is under attack!!!).

The ragged army (could they be accountants and secretaries? i wonder) have to keep their balance in a giant rice bowl that is pushed down a wet slope, into a pond below, by 2 clowns shouting incoherent Japanese (obviously incoherent, since i don't understand Japanese).

Wearing velcro fly-suits, they take turns in swinging from a rope across a muddy moat. The aim is to get stuck to the giant spiders web on the otherside (the creators of this show sure know how to make a grown man look stupid).

Then they run across giant rollers and play the dreaded game: wipe out! Wipe out has a Japanese man dressed as Pocohontas. Oh what a distraction he/she is...The army then makes its way skipping gingerly over real and fake stones, desperately trying not to fall into the muddy water below.

They survive fake earthquakes.
They wrestle fake sumos.
They swing across real muddy water.

They carefully cross a wobbly bridge, holding onto a golden ball, while another set of clowns fires black leather cannon balls at them (sounds kinky, but its innocent, or so i think).

They have a captain who urges them on with incoherent Japanese war cries.
They wear helmets.
They wear knee pads.
They wear lipstick and karate clothes.
They wear kimonos and yellow floral tracksuits.
They loose teeth and sleep when they don't make it.

All this is translated (oh so correctly) for us by Javed Jaffery.

I know it sounds crazy, but its not half as crazy as the war between israel and lebanon, or the war between america and iraq or the war between the terrorists and the innocents.

So i choose, every evening to watch the attack on Takeshi's Castle.

I think it should get an award.
I also think the original creators would die if they knew what Javed was saying.