What's more, when he emerges, blind drunk, it's to the overwhelming applause of voters, who tell our pollsters they're grateful he's so adult as to be up for an eyeful too. So don't think I'm being rude or finger-waggy to call a pornographer a . . . well, pornographer. We now live in a world beyond such moralising -- moralising as comically restrictive as tight underpants or a buttoned fly.

Or, to be specific, we now live in a world in which Falloon and Blackley can happily broadcast -- free to living rooms around Australia -- a show such as Californication. Of course, when I call Falloon and Blackley pornographers I don't mean you to think these nicely suited men -- backbones of the community -- personally filmed this new show, which boasts X-Files star David Duchovny and premiered on Monday. Nor do either of these two dignified men appear in any of Californication's sex scenes. It wasn't them you saw on Monday getting oral sex from a nun, giving it to someone else's wife or romping with any of the several women, who appeared pumping and moaning, buck naked, in the show's first half-hour. Nor was that Falloon you saw mimicking a clitoris in a vagina with his fingers, or Blackley playing a little girl, prattling about the shaven vagina he/she just saw. Not that there'd be anything wrong with any of that, either. Please, please, don't think me a prude because we all know there is now no greater shame. It is only to give you a precise picture that I note Falloon and Blackley's sole role with Californication was to have it run on their station, hoping thereby to rake in a sack of damp cash. They just pimped it, you might say. And it is again just to be precise -- not to damn -- that I use the word ``pornography'' to describe the show Falloon and Blackley broadcast, and advertisers such as Holeproof, Holden and Pitos sponsored. Check the dictionary to see precisely how precise I am. Pornography, mine says, is ``the depiction of erotic behaviour (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement''. And what better description is there of Californication? Its very title describes its sexual intent.