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disgust.
    After that I tried my best, but in the field of physical activity my best isn’t significantly different from my worst. One of the organisers circulated through the crowd, pointing at my star-jumps and murmuring, “That’s what you look like when you have multiple sclerosis.”
    â€œShame!” gasped the crowd, emptying their pockets into the collection box.
    It is, of course, an untrue accusation. I am insufficiently co-ordinated to have multiple sclerosis – one sclerosis at a time is about all I could handle without dropping something.
    Even worse, as I lay gasping for air like a coelacanth on a Madagascan beach choking on a carelessly discarded leg-warmer, was seeing the ageless Gordon Mulholland dashing through his routine like a young gazelle.
    â€œBunblaster?” I gasped from the floor.
    He smirked mysteriously. “So they call me,” he rumbled.
    Packed in ice and taking intravenous doses of Deep Heat, I was fundamentally out of sympathy with the idea of charitable causes by the time I watched Christopher Reeve – A Celebration of Hope (M-Net, Sunday, 7pm), a fundraiser for a foundation that Reeve established to find a cure for spinal injuries. It confirmed my suspicion that selfishness and apathy, while socially unproductive, are far more aesthetically pleasing human traits than public displays of compassion and empathy.
    Reeve himself, strapped in the chair, was elevated in the audience so that everyone could see him. There is an extraordinary power of presence to be derived from sitting immobile in a Hollywood gathering of luvvies and hand-wringers. In tragedy, Reeves has achieved a stature and dignity elusive in the days when he was known only for being a 1970s Superman and appearing in a string of rotten movies.
    If only those around him would have picked up some tips in underplaying a scene. “Hope lights a candle instead of cursing the darkness,” sighed Winona Ryder moistly. A gentleman in the front row hobbled from the auditorium when a cliché accidentally rolled from the stage and crushed his foot.
    Amy Grant sang a song, the first line of which began: “Sometimes it’s hard to remember to keep your feet on the ground.” Reeves blinked in surprise, or perhaps indignation.
    Willy Nelson arrived to strum a, er, foot-tapping tune, which must have made Chris wish he’d lost sensation in his ears too. Jane Seymour flowed on stage, serene as a bottle of hair conditioner, seemingly thinking everyone was there to see her. She started talking about “a movie I acted in with Chris, called Somewhere in Time ”.
    Everyone clapped, as they did every time Reeve’s name was mentioned. “Oh, thank you,” said Jane coyly. Everyone frowned. “I know it’s a great favourite of many people,” she gushed, perhaps thinking of the same people who consider Chains of Gold to be John Travolta’s best movie.
    It’s an unworthy thought, but I can never escape the feeling that charity events are more for the benefit of the charitable donors than for the recipients. It was a thought that stayed with me at the climax of the show, when Reeve was wheeled on stage. The audience rose to give him a standing ovation. A particularly thoughtless tribute, I would have said.
    â€¢ Hot Medium’s I’m-Doing-Anything-To-Avoid-Writing-About-Christmas Award for the most careless television commentary goes to Mungo Poore, reporting on the Sterkfontein fossils on the 8pm News (SABC3): “When the hominid fell into these caves,” opined Mungo thoughtfully, “he probably had no idea of the fuss he would cause three-and-a-half-million years later.” Mungo, that’s probably true.

Darker side of Christmas lurks in every living room
    SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 27 DECEMBER 1998
    C HRISTMAS IS THE great leveller. Perhaps if I had risen from a Muslim tradition I would be writing: “Eid is the great leveller”; but such