Black your faces, chaps: it’s liberal, progressive Maltese television in 2015

Bring out that boot-polish, cover your faces and add some great, big, sausage-like red or white lips. Then stretch your mouth and eyes into an expression of permanent astonishment and call it an Al Jolson look-alike competition (because you know how it is, Al Jolson is so contemporary) so that people don’t accuse you of racist golliwog or black-and-white minstrel action.

We’re in the backwoods – and they’re going to make a point of reminding us about it every day, just in case we relax and start thinking for a moment that we’re actually living in some kind of sophisticated and civilised urbanity.