Then the realisation dawned.

The sports editor hadn't gone all Hugo Chavez on me. The K Club would be adequately covered elsewhere. On the Air was to be a matchplay-free zone.

"Butfbutf the silly clothes, " I stammered. "The wags. Sky and their diddlyaye isn't Ireland great an' all an' all.

Shane O'Donoghue. This is all prime fodder." But no, there's a whole world of sport out there apparently. There was last week's All Ireland final of course, but On the Air is of a Mayo persuasion, and frankly is not being paid enough to sit through that again. So, with remote in hand and a small knapsack of chocolate-based provisions, we set out into the uncharted waters of the TV schedules.

Seeing as it's the weekend that's in it, let's pick on the Americans first (Go European Federalists. Woo! ). ITV have recently moved The Contender, a US boxing reality TV show, from the digital netherworld to their flagship channel. It follows the template of most reality TV shows . . . a group of contestants in a house complaining and doing their best to be the last one standing . . . except in this one they beat each other senseless. And with boxers' penchant for trash talk, in theory this could be the greatest reality show ever made. But as Ali might say, you way out sucka.

Orchestral music rose and fell as the contestants recounted their tough lives selling drugs/being shot at (you can probably spot the link there), not having their daddies etc, while other contestants reassured them after apparently watching a box set of Oprah: "I have no doubts. You can be the best that you can be." Pass the spit bucket.

In Wednesday's episode Walter 'Two Guns' Wright took on Cornelius 'K9' Bundrage, which sounds as if Walter was battling a nasty strain of food poisoning. Both spun their hard luck yarns.

Wright had an uncle who had been shot while K9 had been shot at. Well, that'll have to do I suppose.

Ah, at last, the fight: five rounds of sheer awfulness as K9 held on to Wright incessantly before winning on points.

The action was at least unintentionally hilarious. Sections of the crowd were shown after every decent punch, wincing in a hugely exaggerated fashion, like extras in a silent film. And the sound of the hits landing was souped up in the editing suite, so that by the time we heard them it was like Godzilla landing blows on the Empire State Building.

Defeated, poor old Two Guns only seemed to be able to walk in super slow motion and nobody even had the decency to turn the lights on in his dressing room. Finally Hans Zimmer struck up his orchestra again and Sylvester Stallone's name appeared in the credits as executive producer. Demolition Man was closer to reality than this drivel.

Did you know that A Question of Sport still exists? On the Air happened upon it in a desperate attempt to get away from the g**f on Friday evening and for a moment thought we had found a portal back to our childhood. Barry McGuigan?

Richard Dunwoody? This can't be the present day, surely. But there was Sue Barker, telling us to tune in to the R***r C*p highlights on BBC2 later. Weird.

Okay, so A Question of Sport isn't really intended for cosmopolitan young metrosexuals such as myself. It's probably one of those programmes that aims itself at "the young and the young at heart".

Which is children and idiots basically. But its sheer dreadfulness is too great to go unmentioned. Put it this way, if RTE produced this show tomorrow, this column would be putting on its Ming costume and preparing the pit of fire. Ally McCoist. Andy Gray. Actually this is too easy. Just mentioning those names is enough to have right-minded people sucking their teeth in embarrassment.

Question: Where did the following event take place? Cue footage of Michael Carruth winning gold in Barcelona. Andy Gray: "In a boxing ring!" Cue peals of laughter from the 'young at heart'.

In the final round, the captains had to describe sportspeople without saying their name. McCoist drew Kelly Holmes.

"Olympic gold medallist, 800m and 1500m, lovely girl." Not enough. "Em, Sherlock's sister." With the gales of laughter that followed, it's a wonder the studio stayed standing.

If it's a Friday evening and you find yourself sat indoors watching A Question of Sport, something's gone badly wrong somewhere along the line. Time to play 'What Happens Next'.