So, how was your Valentine's Day? No, no, don't answer that. I was only asking to be polite. I don't really want to know. I don't have much time for Valentine's Day myself. I always spend Valentine's Day in the same way: I wander down to the Chalk On Cue and drink a pink gin without the pink and listen to Porky Withers complaining that he never gets Valentine cards.

One year we all chipped in to buy Porky a novelty Valentine card, which was thoughtful of us, and gave us a good laugh when Porky Withers opened the card and the concealed valve squirted vinegar in his eye. Oh, how we laughed.

Then, at about the time that Porky Withers's head begins to droop and he starts singing Papa was a Rolling Stone in an Irish brogue, it is time to leave. No one knows where Porky Withers found that Irish brogue. He claims he won it off a certain Father Declan in a game of poker, but we don't believe him. Porky Withers is useless at poker, and anyway who would accept one left shoe as a reasonable raise?

Still, this year I was in a mood for lovin', so in preparation for Valentine's Day I watched The Wedding Show (SABC3; Wednesdays; 7pm). Each week The Wedding Show follows a local couple as they prepare for and, so far, go through with their wedding. Ordinarily, this would not appeal to me. Forty minutes of an otherwise happy couple inflicting a wedding on themselves strikes me as something like a slow-motion replay of a car crash, but on Wednesday The Wedding Show made my heart happy.

Still, this year I was in a mood for lovin'

The show is well presented by Chichi Letswalo and Ed Jordan, who always reminds me of Rod Steiger on amyl nitrate. I suppose I should mention that Ed Jordan has, in his time, been an occasional visitor down at the Chalk 'n Cue. We don't see much of him these days, alas. Some say he has a girlfriend now. Some say he is too busy trying to penetrate the youth market. But most of us agree it is because of the time that he started singing and Hairy Mike punched him on the nose.

At any rate, the show is a remarkably effective way of taking a closer look at the lives of ordinary South Africans. Of course, the lives of ordinary South Africans do not always reward examination. The first episode introduced us to Adrian and Sandy. Adrian and Sandy met while Adrian was still a schoolboy and they lived in adjacent caravans in the same park. Adrian has loved Sandy for the past twelve years. While Adrian has been loving Sandy, and finishing school, Sandy has been busy. Principally, she has been busy marrying other people. But that's all over now. Now Sandy is marrying Adrian.

They sat in her home, in front of a gorgeous painting of a fierce-looking lion on crushed velvet and spoke of their love.

"This time I want to wear a white dress," said Sandy, "because it's, you know, different."

They took a quiz to see how well they knew each other. They knew each other very well indeed. They both knew that the other's favourite film was, "Um, war movies". Sandy even knew Adrian's choice of underwear: "Tangas. You know, with the thin bits at the side. Very sexy."

As the show went on, deadpan and unblinking, horror rose in me. I wanted to look away from their life, but I couldn't. I put my hands over my eyes and peeked through the fingers. Sandy shared her words of marital advice with the budding brides of South Africa.

"If you feel you have the right man," said Sandy, about to walk down the aisle for the third time in a decade, "just go for it."

But this week's show was different. This week's show made me feel all warm and well fed. We met Deepak and Shollay, and watched the preparations for their traditional Hindu wedding. Deepak is Shollay's first boyfriend. Shollay is Deepak's first girlfriend. Shollay and Deepak, not to put too fine a point on it, are virgins. When they met they were already adults, resigned to lives of singledom. As we came to know them, I almost swooned with happiness that they had found each other.

Of course, even with television cameras, you can never really know what goes on inside other people's relationships. Relationships are like sausages, or the other side of the curtain that separates economy class from the front of the aircraft: things go on in there at which we can scarcely guess. Still, Deepak and Shollay made me smile.

Deepak told us how he fell in love with Shollay when she sang him a song from an old Hindi musical. As Shollay sang it for us, Deepak's eyes clouded with the simple tears of a good man. I am not much a believer in purity, but watching their pre-marriage purification ceremonies, and knowing they would in any case both be walking down the aisle in a state of virgin grace, for a dizzy moment I almost wished I had withstood the scarlet temptations of the adolescent flesh, and saved myself for that blessed day.

It was right that Shollay, who almost uniquely among modern brides could legitimately wear white, should have been radiant in shades of pink and rose and silver. I shall never forget the look on Deepak's face as he danced with his new bride after the ceremony. It was the look of a man who had at last found his partner, a man finally complete. And it was the look of a man who knows he is finally going to have sex.

It was beautiful, and it was good television, and it reminded me that sometimes marriage can bring happiness. That is a lovely thing of which to be reminded. Maybe next year we will send Porky Withers a card without the vinegar.