For some reason, stand-up comedy never really caught on with Maltese television viewers; the inimitable Ray Calleja and Zoo perform to a niche audience. This does not sit well with the mammoth success of shows like Bla Kommixin – but that is all part of the incomprehensible-to-foreigners Maltese mind.

Last week I was talking to a foreigner who speaks perfect Maltese, and the conversation was punctuated several times by her saying she could not understand why we do this and say the other, as it made no sense to her way of thinking.

This goes to show that learning a language does not mean that one learns the mentality behind it – just as having a degree in journalism does not mean you are picture perfect for a job in the media.

I have ceased to be surprised when foreigners I come across on social sites tell me they have never heard of Malta before. Sometimes, it seems as if even some Maltese live in a different universe.

Even news items about the same incident sometimes contain different details, such as ages, dates, and occupations. When contacted about this, news departments are wont to say “it was a recorded clip” or that they “may” use different sources from those of other stations.

• Katie Price has made a career out of attracting the attentions of the media – but this does not mean she is fair game for comedians who, for lack of innately witty material, resort to cheap barbs about her son Harvey, who has a disability.

Britain’s Channel 4 is now home to the so-called comedian Frankie Boyle. He used to be on the Beeb’s Mock the Week, a political satire show. He left after his antics proved too much even for that.

Now C4, having scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with him, has refused to apologise to Ms Price for the vile attack on a child in a sad excuse for a joke that bore a reference to incest and paedophilia. Boyle himself has refused to apologise to Ms Price about the vile comments he made.

In part this is understandable, because apologies on his behalf would have to be made to HIV-positive people, cancer patients, Colombians, the aged, obese people, thin people, and just about everybody else except people who wear glasses and have tatty facial fuzz that does not match their hair.

A Channel 4 spokesperson said Boyle is one of the UK’s highest-profile comedians; he’s well known for his controversial humour, and the programme carried appropriate warnings as to the nature of the material, (and) the joke aired in the context of a late-night comedy show.

We should, therefore, be thankful for small mercies. Some of our television presenters think they are being funny when they are not – yet at least they are not being deliberately malevolent.

• Reality television means different things to different people. To some people it means lapping up the purported private lives of celebrities, such as the Osbournes, the Duggars and Kardashians in fly-on-the-wall docu-soaps, for different reasons.

However, viewers fail to realise, (or do not want to), that ‘real people’, pushed into the role of ‘actors’, will often behave in a more outrageous, or at least flamboyant, way than they would have done, had the camera lens not been trained upon them.

We see this phenomenon also in game shows produced locally. To begin with, contestants are picked because they stand out from the rest of the hopefuls; and then they get an opportunity to ham it up for the cameras, as do some panel members in discussion programmes that are supposed to be serious.

Unfortunately, even a person who exemplifies media rectitude may be an attention whore in disguise.

Someone somewhere is counting the average daily number of Facebook posts made by specific media personalities, and the number of times his or her photograph appears in different media.

As one of my media friends put it some time ago, it is not the photo that makes for credibility but the attention to details, the commitment to the verification of information which is put out as fact, the use of credible sources, and a clear style of writing.

• Most of us remember Stefan Galea as the child who did us proud in Zecchino D’Oro in 1982 when he had won with the song Il-Merill Twitt Twitt.

Stefan has now grown up. As Fr Stefan, he was the celebrant of the standing-room only Mass celebrated at the open day organised by Eileen Montesin and her KC team.

The day was a lively and joyful time for all those who turned up – and were reluctant to leave. The nuns, some of whom are foreign, resident at the Mellieħa convent, gave a rendition of an African dance, and the actors could not help hamming it up and speaking in character as they posed for photographs with their fans and signed hundreds of autographs.

The Our Lady of Lourdes Choir, of San Ġwann, under their able maestro Ray Storace, brought the day to an end with a fantastic concert.

Most importantly, the collection made for Sister Catherine, who is currently in the Philippines but will be returning for a while come December 28, totalled €1,600.

• Melita is set to almost double the TV line-up to 150 channels this year.

It made a point of saying that it was triple the amount of channels currently offered by other local pay-TV operators. This is neither here nor there – not after the ruckus raised about the last listings offered by both of them.

television@timesofmalta.com