I was pleased when I arrived at Stan's Video Store this week and found that there were no Katharine Hepburn films left on the shelves. Well, not entirely pleased – it meant I ended up having to watch Michael Caine in Jaws 4 – The Revenge, which had its own consolations and points of interest, but which wasn’t the same thing at all.

Still, it did please me to reflect that some other good citizens around town were obviously taking the time and the video contract units to pay the best sort of homage to Hepburn – watching her work.

I wasn’t entirely shocked when I heard that Hepburn had died – she was 96, after all, and to tell you the truth I had half an idea she might have died already – but it was a passing that demanded remembrance.

I have always been a little in love with Hepburn. My ideal woman – before I had the opportunity to actually meet some real women – was made up of equal parts of Hepburn, Purdey, Lauren Bacall and that teenage girl who owned the horse in the 1970s TV series of Black Beauty. (Judy Bowker, if you're trying to remember.) Actually, the young Brooke Shields was mixed in as well, but I try not to remember that now. Every person has the right to edit out at last one earlier love from their official history.

Her dander, when up, was magnificent to behold

I don't know why I liked Hepburn when I was young, but I know why I liked her as I grew older. She was strong and smart and she could win arguments by arguing well, not by crying or threatening to leave. She could laugh at your jokes and be funny herself in equal measure, and her eyes flashed when her dander was up. You could see her eyes flashing even in black and white, and her dander, when up, was magnificent to behold.

I remember looking at her quarrelling with Spencer Tracey in an old print of Adam's Rib on a Sunday afternoon on SABC in the 1980s and idly thinking: "That’s what marriage should be like."

Hepburn and Spencer Tracey had my favourite marriage, and they weren't even married. They were equal, and they knew that being equal didn't mean being the same. There was more love in their quarrels than in a thousand smoochy love scenes. More than anything, Hepburn struck me as the kind of woman you could spend an awfully long time with. You could never imagine her reading Bridget Jones's Diary, or watching Oprah, or flicking through a copy of Cosmo, except to snarl.

She was a strong woman, and she didn't have to keep saying so in order to be it. Her passing is a good reason to believe, just for a moment, in John Edwards and life-after-death: I would like to imagine Ms Hepburn and Mr Tracey, separated for 36 vicious, wasting years, meeting now in a place where there is no Parkinson's for her, no heart disease for him; some eternally loving marriage with a good plot and crackling dialogue and a happy ending that just keeps coming round.

But real life trudges on. Many of the obituaries for Hepburn this week explained her presence and appeal, her strength, by saying that she was a woman who was in some respects very much like a man, an assessment I consider to be both unperceptive and frankly insulting to strong women.

There was another woman on television this week who is in some respects very much like a man: The Baroness. The Baroness presents Below the Belt (SABC3; Tuesdays; 10pm), a sort of X-rated talk show that examines, hoo boy, elements of South African sexuality, or sex lives, or something.

I don't mean to give away the joke of the show – especially since it is pretty much the only joke – but the Baroness is, well, not to the manner born, shall we say. The first time I saw the Baroness was probably 15 or 20 years ago, on an episode of Tony Sanderson's first late-night chat show, which I suppose serves me right. At the time, before I actually had the opportunity to meet some real women, I squinted at the old Sony Trinitron and scratched my head. I thought: "That’s a strange sort of woman... different, somehow." Had fate been less charitable to the innocent, the Baroness may well have joined Hepburn and Bacall and Bowker in my private compendium of womanhood.

The Baroness is an enduring South African character, but alas that does not make her funny. Camp, I never tire of saying, does not mean witty. Camp people may be witty, and their campness may promote that wittiness, but they are not witty because they are camp. Nor the other way round. The Baroness waves her hands around and speaks much as Jenny Crwys-Williams speaks, but that is not enough. The difference is that Crwys-Williams is funny.

This week the Baroness and camera crew went to Sandy Bay. "I don’t know why they call it Sandy Bay," said the Baroness with a wink and a Wildean air of being about to say something clever, "when all I see are rocks". I can only hope that line wasn't scripted, but even spontaneity is no excuse. Spontaneity, as local presenters never seem to learn, demands a great deal of careful preparation.

Once on the beach, the camera gave us full-frontals of a pair of sensitive young men without clothes on.

"I am looking at your cocks," said The Baroness helpfully. Over the course of 20 minutes, we learnt that some people come to Sandy Bay to have sex, and some come to Sandy Bay just to get away from the office.

Then the Baroness left Sandy Bay. If you thought that was unilluminating, the next stop was an interview with Jeremy Mansfield. Tell me, what would you like to learn about Jeremy Mansfield's sex life? No, me neither.