KEY POINTS:
The only consistent factor during this test series with England has been the Barmy Army, united in their mad singalongs, led by the trumpeter and the rotund chap with the curious falsetto. At times when I was grinding my teeth over New Zealand's wonkiness, the Barmy Army cheered
me up, being so charming and insane.
That's how Robbie Coltrane affectionately describes the English in his journeys through Incredible Britain on the Living Channel on Sunday nights. Travelling along the B-roads in his 1957 open-top Jag, Coltrane shows us backwaters never seen on conventional tours.
He stopped in Stilton to witness the annual wood-rolling competition, where grown men dressed as Red Indians rolled blocks the shape of the famous cheese along the road. This curious practice has developed to boost a town nearly killed by the adjacent byway. Coltrane hates the byways.
Last week, he met a pastor biker - the Faster Pastor - who has developed a neat little motorcycle funeral service, and he conducted the Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band. His technique may have been akin to a windmill, as he said, but it's a charming and interesting series which takes us off the beaten track.
Another quiet treasure on the Living Channel is Gavin Stamp's Orient Express, screening on Saturday nights and well worth chasing up on DVD. Stamp, an architectural historian, is one of those unlikely TV presenters - critical and acerbic. Chasing the trail of the old glamorous Orient Express, Stamp has passed through much of the same territory as Michael Palin in New Europe, but where Palin was careful and diplomatic, Stamp blasts.
A couple of weeks ago he detoured to Sarajevo and lamented the Serb shelling of the National Library in which the entire cultural history of Bosnia was destroyed. The wickedest thing, he snarled. Barbarian regimes always hate history because it's the truth.
He could barely contain his disdain when he ventured on to Serbia, growling that he hardly feel less friendly towards the Serbs.
To his horror, he had to break his journey to Belgrade and stay at a farmhouse where the owners took him to meet the pigs. "Country living - I can't bear it. You can keep it," he moaned, before being taken out fishing in a little boat which slowly sank.
After visiting Belgrade he concluded that Serbia was an international pariah, which was entirely the Serbs' own fault because of their behaviour. Can you imagine Palin saying such things? There'd be an international scandal.
Last week Stamp went on to Transylvania and its single natural resource - Dracula. He simply could not believe that the country had developed a tourism industry based on the real life of Vlad the Impaler, a mass-murdering sadist. Ridiculous, he thundered. What if Cambodia based its tourism on Pol Pot?
Its not all bad temper. Stamp has the skill to explore, through architecture, the history of this troubled region and still find pockets of beauty, often in the ancient churches and mosques. At those times, his soul and his vocabulary swell.
Bucharest, however, he found unspeakably dreadful; its ghastly Palace of the People absurd. He didn't take us inside because the authorities wanted 5000 Euros an hour to film and it's just not worth it, he told us with gritted teeth. Palin dragged us around the palace. They must have paid.
As Stamp left Bucharest, bound for Istanbul, he complained that the train was rundown and filthy. He is a first-class historian and a champion Englishman-abroad moaner. I love it.
