If ever you find yourself in a gloomy mood, an evening's viewing of Hong Kong TV will cure your blues. Not the shows. They are mostly recycled American sitcoms, time breaks, poorly acted Cantonese soaps or decade old movies.

It's the advertisements that will bring a smile to your dial. Any particular ad break will always have at least one advertisement for skin whitening products. I do not understand the phenomena but it seems every woman between the ages of 15 and 50 needs to apply various lotions and masks to make her skin whiter than Michael Jackson. If the diet ads are anything to go by, Kate Moss is considered a fatty because she has unsightly thighs and tummy. They are not starting with huge women here - most of them look in good shape already. So Hong Kong's ideal woman is a ghost-looking waif.

The rest of the advertisements are Government announcements. These are ads which tell a story with an impossible to guess moral. Often a merry evening has been spent trying to anticipate what paternalistic message the great Mandarins of the HK Government are trying to ram down our throat.

In one ad break there was one where a boy couldn't play football because it was raining. He was sad. His mate told him it will be OK tomorrow and so it was. The sad boy asked his friend how he knew it would be OK. The friend replied that he didn't, but he had a positive attitude. I think the message was meant to be "cheer up, it doesn't always rain in Hong Kong". I actually thought I had guessed this one: I thought it was advertising the HK Weather Office website. But then they stuck up a graphic saying don't commit suicide. Jeepers, if kids are killing themselves because it's raining then there's little hope for Hong Kong's future.

However the funniest advertisment was to come. Shot with the camera as the protagonist we were walking outside and meeting various people, shaking their hands, looking at their smiling faces and sitting down at a workstation. All seemingly normal interactions of an everyday person. Then the kicker: "Let's welcome rehabilitated offenders back into the community." Where did that come from? Have they just put a particularly bad batch of crims back on the street? I've made a note to myself: make sure I give an extra happy hello to all the ex-cons I meet.

It was enough to make me wish it was raining.