There are times in life when we stumble unwittingly into awkward conversation with those with whom we should never have made eye contact. We’ve all been there: cornered by a creepy uncle with clammy hands at a family wedding; harangued by a wily tramp angling for pennies; aurally assaulted by terrifyingly radiant graduates in waterproof jackets trying to get you to send £400 a month to save the universe, man.

When it happens to ourselves it can be irritating, frustrating, claustrophobic and intense. You try your utmost to retain a sense of decorum: have patience, be civil, nod at the right moments, avoid causing offence. Mitigating the pain of these occasions is an art which can be developed and honed over time.

However, when we sense that someone else has been ensnared by unenviable company, all we can do is sit back, count our blessings and enjoy the unfurling episode…

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The ubiquitous, nigh-unrelenting nature of today’s media doubtless has its merits; it feeds - even fuels - our epistemic desire for constant, up-to-the-minute updates. So much so, perhaps, that our thirst is symptomatic of the resources we have at our fingertips: portable internet devices are increasingly rendering newspapers as antiquated as papyrus leaves.

Reportage is essential. Editorials step back and offer (often insightful) perspective. Video allows for graphic portrayals; ‘realisations’ of events relayed to passive recipients.

But at what point does media coverage become invasive, clinical or insensitive? And to what extent is this related to the rate at which news output is produced, broadcast and ultimately turned over?

On Friday a tsunami hit Japan. On Monday evening, bbc 1 aired a ‘special edition’ epsiode of a relatively bouncy, informal and informative show called ‘Bang Goes the Theory’. Its subject was the tsunami that hit Japan on Friday.

Cue the opening credit scene, the ‘attention grabber’ as you can imagine it being referred to on a ‘how to’ guide for would-be producers. A chirpy female voice recounts, in breathy sentences packed with inane adjectives, the events of the past few days. Footage ensues. And then we are informed of what we’ll learn over the course of the next 30 minutes. We’ll visit a workshop where two pieces of wood held in a vice will gradually be forced together until once suddenly juts above the other, thereby explaining how the tsunami occurred. That chirpy voice will return alongside two casual would-be science types garbed in check/denim shirts (incorrigibly interchangable) and chinos, talking about the devastation in Japan. Talk, that is, over the drone of echoey voices beneath them. They are hanging out on a mezzanine in a recently-opened, chrome-laden, interactive science/learning centre for kids, of course.

Only, the show isn’t pitched at kids. It feels so far removed and so very hypothetical. Nothing they say seems to be remotely related to real life. It fails to resonate and it seems incredulous. Their words are light, frivolous, buoyant; they seem to float away like helium balloons.

How soon is now? Too soon, perhaps.

The BBC’s pre- and post-match coverage of the World Cup is largely made up of second-rate correspondents bellowing over revellers in ‘fanzones’, and tiresome, overly-sentimental montages of previous footballing encounters.

However, it is refreshing to see genuinely interesting pieces which link the beautiful game to aspects of South Africa’s broader history. Recent pieces on the etymology of ‘the Kop’ (which dates back to a British defeat in the Boer), and Sir Stanley Matthews’s annual community work in Soweto, were particularly illuminating – welcome antidotes to inane punditry and slow-motion replays set to schmaltzy soundtracks.