Now I don't mind boxing, and the fight at Dublin's Point last Saturday night provided an extraordinary spectacle. It had girls in short skirts holding up flags and sweeping back luxurious curtains for no particular reason other than, presumably, the overwhelmingly male audience likes that sort of thing.

Watching the event, it was as if the last 40 years had never happened.

Two very small men were trying to beat the hell out of each other. When I say small, I mean really small. When our hero, Bernard Dunne, was first revealed on the stairs, he looked like the tiny and sinister figure from the movie Don't Look Now. I think he weighs eight-anda-half stone. His British opponent, Esham Pickering, was showered with coins as he approached the ring . . . and not in a good way. Then the crowd booed the British national anthem . . . it was all unreconstructed fun.

But the problem was the blood. The bloody blood. Something happened to Pickering's nose and he bled. All over himself, all over his trunks, all over the trunks of our hero, Bernard Dunne. And, in a way which was somehow the worst of all, all over the referee.

At the end of the fight, the Italian referee's white shirt was covered with sweat . . . perhaps his own sweat . . . and with Pickering's blood. Kind of ruined things for me. Don't know why. Everyone else seemed very calm about it. Jimmy Magee said that kind of bleeding was only an annoyance to a fighter, what with the blood going down the back of his throat and everything.

As a patriotic Irish person, one could only be glad for Bernard Dunne, who had won the European Super Bantamweight title. And very glad indeed that one would not be looking for a taxi in Dublin the next day. Glad, and just that little bit queasy.

Or take last Sunday night. A quiet night in. A roaring fire. Time, perhaps, for a romantic comedy. But no. Ended up watching The Proposition. Here is all you need to know about The Proposition: it was written by the musician Nick Cave (this gives it brownie points in some quarters). It is set in 19th-century Australia, in the baking wilderness.

It features a gang of Irish psychopaths.

The action takes place under the permanent threat of rape. There is a flogging and many killings, graphically portrayed.

Several attempts had been made to introduce The Proposition into our viewing schedule . . . all vigorously opposed. It is a good film, but it makes pretty horrible viewing. The audience was very divided. One half kept on saying: "Are you enjoying it? It's well made, isn't it?"

The other half was hiding behind a cushion.

Towards the end of The Proposition, a friend texted a message that she wanted to kill Inspector Barnaby's horrible wife and daughter. A message was rapidly fired back saying that she didn't know how lucky she was, thatMidsomer Murders was a rural idyll, when you are watching unfortunate Aborigines having their heads blown off. The friend texted her reply: "Oh dear. Men."

And there you have it. As The Proposition ended, one half of the audience put down its cushion and shivered towards the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The other half of the audience switched over to watch The Most Dangerous Job in the World, which is a programme about crab fishermen dicing with death in the freezing seas off Canada. Sometimes you get the feeling that there are people in this world who have never heard of Hugh Grant.

We had a break then, for the end of Midsomer Murders. Just in time to see that nice lady convicted of multiple killings, because a young girl of loose morals had betrayed her. (It has to be said that dramas enjoyed by women do seem to dispose of young women who love sex with extraordinary savagery.

Strictly Confidential, UTV's heartwarming drama about a sex therapist, did the same thing on Thursday night. ) Never mind, eh? Midsomer Murders cruised to its happy ending, with Mrs Barnaby still extant. Time for the second telly, I think.