Sky's the limit for those who demand the best when it comes to sheer mayhem

'As I speak to you, every part of my body is entirely sealed!" said Emma in the northern Kuwaiti desert. I couldn't be sure it was true - Sky News's coverage of the war in the Gulf, while impressively thorough, couldn't take us that far into the heart of the campaign.

Emma was a frightening sight - in her head-to-toe charcoal-lined camouflage protective suit and her weirdly anachronistic gas mask, she resembled some sort of paramilitary Womble. Throughout the day, whenever we crossed to the troops in northern Kuwait, Emma was either struggling into her protective gear or wriggling from it, the cold and fearful sound of the gas alert siren or - almost indistinguishable - the all-clear in the background.

On one occasion we crossed over to find that Emma had taken refuge in the bunker. The camera, fixed on its tripod, impassively showed distant men running, shouting, affixing their gas masks, kicking up small clouds of desert sand. For a terrible, terrible moment before sanity reasserted itself, I leant closer to the screen, hoping something exciting might be about to happen. For that dreadful moment I forgot I was watching a war. It was as though I were watching Big Brother Iraq.

It was as though I were watching Big Brother Iraq

The 24-hour multichannel coverage of operations in Iraq are even more surreal than coverage of the Gulf war in 1991. The various international news channels this time were better prepared, with journalists on the front lines, on aircraft carriers, attached to infantry units and tank divisions.

The news gathering and news transmission operations are as carefully planned and executed as the military procedures themselves. What's worse, with 10 years of reality TV conditioning, the way we experience real life and television - and real life on television - it becomes increasingly difficult not to treat the coverage as another species of entertainment, an unfolding saga with twists and turns and unexpected surprises.

From Thursday morning, when we woke to the news that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may or may not have been killed by a sudden night-time missile strike, the war has been playing itself out in our living rooms like an elaborate drama series, complete with theme music and credits and titles and celebrity guests and constant scrolling updates on the story so far.

Strangely, having reporters there on the ground, speaking into the microphone with one hand blocking an ear against the noise of a Cobra helicopter gunship passing overhead, saying things like, "There has been a firefight on the outskirts of Basra, just a few kilometres from here", somehow does not make the war more real. It makes it seem like any other reality show. We have seen so much on television pretending to be real, these last years, that nothing on television feels real any more.

Once again, Sky News has edged out the competition at CNN and BBC World when it comes to the battle of the broadcasters. While the others lapse occasionally into logos and channel idents and - CNN's speciality - inserts explaining just how they have managed to set up their cameras and where the broadcasting unit is located, Sky's coverage - or "intelligence", I suppose you would say - has all the depth and variety you expect from modern war coverage. Plus, there is the quirky pleasure of hearing the Sky reporters refer to the "Dee-Em-Zed", instead of the Americans' "Dee-Em-Zee".

I demand nothing but the best

I made some slight attempt to watch the local channels, but I was defeated. When I crossed over to e.tv, some local worthy was explaining to Debra Patta how the working classes of South Africa were going to bring the Bush regime to its knees by "boycotting American movies and American oil".

Over on SABC3, we were talking to Rene Horne, live in Baghdad. "It's very tense here," said Horne, half a day after the first missiles started landing in Baghdad. "Almost like a war zone." Thanks, Rene.

When the war first started I was jumping from one channel to the next - like the multi-camera views in the Big Brother house - but now I seldom budge from Sky.

Oh yes, when men in distant parts are killing each other, I demand nothing but the best.

Ever since the rise of the media, there has been a strange tension between journalism and warfare, and I had a reminder of that this week. Last weekend I watched a 1949 film called Battleground (DStv; TCM channel), starring Van Johnson in a true-life story of the American 101st airborne division, surrounded and isolated in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge.

It was a surprisingly fine war film, in an era when war films were mostly jingoism and John Wayne. It was dark and sarcastic and naggingly cynical about the lot of the ground troops in any army, in any war, blindly following orders sent from a thousand kilometres away.

Halfway through, as German mortars whistled overhead and the soldiers in his platoon tried to work out what country they were in, Johnson sighed: "Just for once I'd like to know what's going on before my sister in Baltimore reads about it in the newspaper over her cornflakes and orange juice."

On Thursday, at around midday, after the entire world had for several hours been watching footage of the strikes on Baghdad, Sky crossed to Stewart Ramsay in northern Kuwait, where he was based with - yes! - the American 101st airborne division.

"Well," said Ramsay, "I think the news is just beginning to filter through to the soldiers that the air-strikes have started."

It was a peculiar, embarrassed feeling that came over me. There in the background were the enlisted men of the 101st, working with motor parts or drinking bottled water or just staring at the sky. In days or hours they would be going into battle. They would fire bullets and bullets would be fired at them, and here I sat on my sofa in Africa, and I knew more of what was happening to them than they did. And then I turned off the television, and went outside for a walk.