No searching questions are asked, no revelations are forthcoming, and no face is lost. They will say anything apart from telling the truth. The Old Ginger Cabinet has hardly been a chocolate factory of yummy sound bites. Even the interviewer gets bored and nods off. "You've done what in the last six months? Sorry, mate, I was miles away. I remember something about 4.5 per cent in real terms, then it all went blank."

For a truly juicy political interview, find someone with the al-Jazeera Arabic channel. You can get it on the Net. The interviews are brilliant, animated, unscripted bouts of mayhem. I once watched a lengthy argument on al-Jazeera, and the amazing thing is I hadn't a clue what they were talking about. The interviewees shouted and interrupted each other all the time, and you found yourself picking sides. For all I know I was rooting for the guy who was screaming that the Taleban were too soft on women.

When politicians do get riled up in Thailand they employ a standard polemical trick, distorting what the opponent says and then attacking the distortion. And you think, such class, such breeding. They have no shame, which is a shame. But there you go. And if someone does slip up and actually spills the truth, they get arrested for blatant honesty and exiled in disgrace. And no matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up. And they call us homo sapiens.

However, the real concern hovering over this moment in Thailand's political history is that if the good citizens of this Kingdom can't even agree on what has happened during the past five years, they are unlikely to agree on what happens in the next five.

A true and fair constitution organised by this government is somewhat disingenuous, because you are asking the people who are backing it to collude in what would undoubtedly be their own downfall. And that isn't going to happen.

***

The reactions will be very instructive come Wednesday. As Thomas Jefferson had it: "Where you stand depends upon where you sit."

If they get busted, will the Thai Rak Thai executives flounce off in a queenly huff and shout: "Unleash the pachyderms!" Or if found innocent, alight at the nearest five-star hotel and say: "Nice one, gentlemen. Well paid. New Mercs all round."

But if limo-loads of politicians are scuttled off into political oblivion, who have we got left? A handful of veteran politicians who don't need electing but do require a nurse and some screens.

No matter what happens on Wednesday, there will be someone who knew it would.

***

Meanwhile, our ousted leader spent at least three minutes foaming away like a tethered wildebeest outside a McDonaldski in Moscow last week. And who walks around with Bt1.2 million in their briefcase, apart from Robert Mugabe perhaps? Next thing we know, Thaksin's friends back home will be issuing bumper stickers that read: "Thai Rak Thai: BEGGING FOR CHANGE".

Perhaps the next best move for Thaksin is to make a movie with the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. It should be a high-paced thriller with the two leaders grappling with unseemly liberals and freethinking journalists who have hijacked their plane at 30,000 feet.

They could call it "Airbus One".

***

The New Chivalry Party - which now has nine members and a three-legged pug dog as security - recently held a survey to pinpoint one's class and place in Thai society. There was one question: How would you describe the green area outside your house?

We had three answers:

A: The backyard

B: The garden

C: Phuket!

Elsewhere, the Students for a Free Tibet have announced that Yingsel, the Tibetan antelope amongst China's five Olympic mascots, has resigned in protest.

Banned phrases for the Chinese police in the lead-up to the Olympics:

"I can tell you aren't a good person just by looking at you."

***

The poet WH Auden once wrote, "Every death diminishes us." For the most part, I've always agreed and believed in that sentiment. Life really is precious. But the death of Mullah Dadullah had me, well, punching the air. His well-deserved reputation as the most feared of the Taleban commanders was earned on the back of savage and symbolic acts of violence. A head-hacker par excellence. Some will say he died a martyr's death, but what heavenly virgin could possibly have him after what he has done? Is there any discretion up there? A caring mamasan? Can a virgin refuse? Discuss.

But it was Dadullah's decision to dynamite the two ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan - claiming they were an affront to Islam - that sealed his reputation as a Philistine. And for me, it was almost personal. Like a few thousand others, I have climbed the steep cliff, marvelled at the Buddhist frescoes on the way up, and stood on the top of those Buddhas in that mystical valley in the heart of Afghanistan. Bamiyan was the furthest point west that Buddhism reached in symbolic form. Imagine entering the valley from the west on horseback in the 12th century without any prior knowledge of what Buddhism even was.

I was sitting at this desk when I saw the video clip of their appalling destruction. The air in my studio turned blue. You howling mad bastard, I thought and slammed my fist so hard on the table that the neighbour's cat jumped out the window - which was closed at the time. Shards of glass and cat fur rained down in the courtyard. But it survived. Cats always do.

There are many countries for which a heart can bleed for these days. For me, it's always been Afghanistan. Herodotus called this region the breadbasket of Asia, and its vulnerability and richness have seen it perpetually conquered, and reviving, even from the obliteration of Genghis Khan.

In the 12th century, Herat's population exceeded that of Paris and Rome. It knew a golden age under the descendants of Tamerlaine. In 1460, Herat was a sanctum of painters, artists and historians. You couldn't move a leg without kicking a poet.

Like then and now, Afghan men look like starved hawks, except the drug lords, who are fat and would make even a Thai politician's bank balance look puny. Afghans have a dignified reserve. Some of the women are miraculously beautiful. And it's true what they say: an Afghan will either be you friend for life or shoot you on the spot. They don't do in-betweens.

Up in the north in Mazar-e-Sharif, the electricity, they say, comes from Uzbekistan - but only when the president is making illicit love in the dark.

Compiled by Roger Beaumont