It's not big, it's not clever, it's not particularly enlightened - it's not even especially good television - but there's one constant that remains with me and has done throughout my various years of television viewing: Australia's Funniest Home Videos.

This love has caused rifts in my family (my Mum and her partner "hate" the show and have used terms ranging from "idiotic" - okay - to "fascist" - uhh - to describe it) and amongst workmates and friends.

There is a small, core group of friends with whom I know I can share my AFHV love - in particular my pal Jamie, with whom it's not unusual to fire off rapid text message commentary on the show any given Saturday. We're both hip and well-connected people (or so our mothers tell us), but there's a fairly good chance we'll be unoccupied at that time each week.

I don't know why I still feel the need to justify my love of Australia's Funniest Home Videos year after year, but I do.

Why do I love it so? Well, it's simple, really: everyone loves watching people eat dirt; it's why they invented the internet, after all. But on a deeper level, there is something rather Zen about the symbiosis of Shelley Craft's psychotic inanity, the Voiceover Dude's array of about 12 "hilarious" accents, all the "boing" sound effects left at Nine by John Blackman and Murray Tregonning, and, of course, the videos themselves.

More than anything, watching AFHV is oddly... relaxing. Spending an hour either barking with laughter or howling in disgust and sympathetic terror is quite cathartic. You get to the end of the week, spend most of Saturday attempting to change down, don't quite get there - and then you hear that music and you know that within 50 minutes or so, you'll feel like you've never had a care in the world.

Another admirable thing AFHV does? (Although this is mostly due to the buy-ins/content-sharing between them and their American counterpart.) The show introduces the masses to the hidden comedy value of classical music.

You've got to remember that for the most of this country's population, classical music is something that is derided by twelve-year-old boys everywhere and rarely given much air-time beyond that age. But AFHV shows you that classical music is far from boring - in fact, it is utterly and relentlessly hilarious. 

Here's some bike accidents, to the tune of Hungarian Rhapsody:



And how about some dogs going spazzo to The Galop from Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld? (It's no wonder they chose this piece, since dogs OFFENBACH!! LOL!)



Brilliant, I feel smarter already.

There are times when the show oversteps the mark in terms of trying to be a more serious or rewarding hour of entertainment, be it with celebrity guest programming segments ("Great idea, let's get Metro Station in to sit in front of a plasma screen and attempt to crack wise about their top five funniest videos ever!") or the inevitably awkward "live" performance.

But when you just sit back and let the videos of grandmothers breaking their coxyx and babies vomiting milk and dads getting kicked in the nuts wash over you, you achieve an amazing level of calm and enlightenment.

Sometimes it's okay to sit down and watch an hour of complete dross. In these days of the "Shakespearean" drama of heavy-going shows like The Sopranos and In Treatment, and the idea that all television should be Important (or at least Good), it's easy to forget the simple, restorative pleasures of Australia's Funniest Home Videos.

As Bill and Ted found out when reading Socratic method, the only true wisdom comes in knowing that you know nothing.

Dude, that's us!