Prepare yourselves, dear readers, for the first of many gratuitous acts of shameless self-promotion on these pages over the next couple of months. Are you ready? You may want to pour yourself something comfortable and settle into your favourite sofa before you read this. Come to think of it, maybe you should make yourself a sandwich. Not everyone can take gratuitous acts of shameless self-promotion on an empty stomach. Feel like a sandwich? No? Are you sure? Well, all right, then. Here goes.

I have spent the past several days writing my second book. Don't berate yourself for not joining the throng that bought the first book. In about six weeks' time you will have the opportunity to make good your faithlessness by buying the second book. In fact, I think you will agree that it is only fair that you buy two copies of the second book. Now don't be remiss again - you don't want to find yourself having to buy three copies of the third book. The price is likely to be much higher next year. Honestly, I have only your best interests at heart.

It is not much fun, writing a book. It is not as glamorous as driving a Formula One racing car, say, although to be fair it also doesn't smell so much of fuel and scorched rubber.

I would not recommend writing a book to anyone concerned about their appearance. You will eat too much pizza and takeaway fried chicken, and you will look unsightly on the cover photograph.

Jamie lithping hith way through a rethipe for vithythoise

There is one good thing about writing a book, though: you get to watch a lot of television. Oh yes, indeed. I would estimate you watch about 15 minutes of television for every 33 words of book you write. Then, after 15 minutes, you come over all guilty and rush back to write another 33 words.

So I have been watching a lot of television, but very few entire programmes. I have seen many adverts and trailers for upcoming shows. For instance, it comes to my attention that there is a new Jamie Oliver television series. Or perhaps it is a one-off show - it is hard for me to pick up the finer details, because whenever I see Jamie Oliver I stick my fingers in my ears and start singing the Internationale at the top of my voice, so that I don't have to hear Jamie lithping hith way through a rethipe for vithythoise. The new show is titled Oliver's Twist. Isn't that clever? Isn't it adorable? Doesn't that just make you want to bury Jamie Oliver upside-down in the desert and not apply any sunblock to the naked soles of his feet?

But there is one good thing I can say about Jamie Oliver. It is this: Jamie Oliver is not Helmut Lotti. Another advert came bopping onto my screen. It was for Helmut Lotti's My Tribute To The King. I don't want to frighten any small children who may be reading this column, but the advert features the Lottster, looking alarmingly like the young Cliff Richard, driving a convertible past a neon casino sign while crooning the ballads of Elvis Presley. No, really, it does. In the back seat of the convertible are three young ladies, their pockets no doubt jingling with nickels for the slot machines, making a concerted effort to ignore Little Lotti's rendition of Suspicious Minds. Did Elvis ever play chauffeur on his visit to Vegas? Would the King have been pleased with his tribute from the Belgian waffler? It's hard to say. "This is the album you've been waiting for!" enthused the voice-over. I was too overcome even to think up a snappy reply. "No," I murmured in a small, bewildered voice. "It isn't."

I did watch one programme all the way through. The Mystery Of Zulu Dawn (DSTV, National Geographic channel, Tuesday at 9pm) took us to the battlefield of Isandlwana, where the British army suffered its most devastating military defeat of the Victorian era, at the spearpoints of the Zulu nation.

Teams of forensic historians painstakingly recreated the battle through shell casings and grave cairns and battle paraphernalia excavated from the blood-washed Zululand scrub. When you are writing a book you are eager for any kind of artificial assistance, so I was especially interested in the new discoveries - new, at any rate, to me - of the medicinal potions the impis carried into battle. Besides the undeniably superior tactics and generalship of the Zulu forces at Isandlwana, it was suggested that their fighting instincts were enhanced by the strategic use of snuffs carried into battle in hollowed-out horns strung around their necks.

Looks like cannabis, the historians said warily.

Credo Mutwa, who generally appears on such occasions, informed us about green snuff and an altogether more sinister mixture called red mushroom snuff. British toxicologists tested the red mushroom snuff on a pair of Birmingham judo experts, who reported increased aggression, co-ordination, emotional detachment and a sense of enhanced physical strength.

Whether or not a pair of Birmingham judo experts make for a balanced clinical trial was left to the viewers' judgment. The historians then bought a packet of green snuff from a local sangoma, who assured them it was precisely the mixture of snuff used back in the war-days of 1879. "Looks like cannabis," the historians said warily.

The snuff was tested and proved to be an extract of cannabis high in the stimulant compound THC, but with the sedative compound CBD almost entirely missing. Using such snuff, the impis would fight all day with detached and furious focus, although you can only imagine they would have been overcome with the urge to rush home and raid the fridge at the end of the battle.

It was quite a testimony to the sophistication of the Zulu medical corps, and a fascinating peek down a neglected side-alley of military history. It was a good story, well told.

"War is a lion on whose back you fall, never to get off," said Credo Mutwa thoughtfully. He may well have been right.