Just a few days after I bemoaned the fact television is generally awful, today I discovered Brainiac. I had heard the name before, but I had never watched it before. Now I’m hooked, already.

For the uninitiated, Brainiac is essentially a kids’ science show for adults. This means that it undertakes thoroughly silly experiments, such as attempting to see which pieces of hospital equipment make the most practical vehicles when propelled by carbon dioxide fire extinguishers, and infuses them with a layer of good old-fashioned British innuendo, such as a leather-clad scientist lady asking “how hard is your thing?” before inviting a selection of nerdy-looking men to display their hard objects to her, which she then drops a ton of bricks on, angle grinds and sets fire to.

Hosted initially by Richard Hammond of Top Gear fame and later Vic Reeves of, err, Vic Reeves fame, it’s a thoroughly silly show that doesn’t try to be anything more than it is — a bunch of grown men and women performing throughly silly yet visually entertaining exercises under the tenuous pretence that they’re “doing Science”. GLaDOS would be proud.

I suppose thinking about it, it’s perhaps, ironically, not the most cerebral show in the world — the last one I watched featured an experiment to determine which foodstuffs produce the smelliest farts, judged by a member of the crew who’d been on holiday recently rating them out of ten and memorably describing the smell of a fart from a man who’d been eating nothing but Brussels sprouts as “like a hermit’s earmuff”. But then there are genuinely interesting scientific titbits, too, such as the revelation that custard is a non-Newtonian liquid, which means when impacted it has the properties of a solid and otherwise has the properties of a liquid. This means, as the team (including Jon Tickle of Big Brother fame) demonstrates, that it’s possible to walk across a swimming pool filled with custard, so long as you keep moving. If you stop, you’ll sink into it like quicksand.

I haven’t sat down and genuinely watched kids’ TV for quite some time — I’ve had no real reason to, as I’ve not had a hangover for quite a while — so I’m not sure if kids have an equivalent “YAY SCIENCE!” programme available for them to watch. I remember there being quite a few programmes involving “YAY SCIENCE!” and “YAY MATHS!” when I was little — mostly involving Johnny Ball, as I recall — but I have to admit I’d be surprised if the same sort of thing still existed today.

Still, there’s nothing stopping the kids from watching Brainiac, of course — it appears to air on Sunday mornings, so what’s to stop them wondering why the men with the objects look so uncomfortable when the nice lady in the tight suit asks them how hard is their thing?

Here’s a clip for you to enjoy if you’ve never had the pleasure.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkJdaU92Ln8]