"I believe in treating all guys the same," said April as she readjusted her breasts. "I treat all guys as though they have money. You have to. Otherwise you become all jaded and, you know, cynical."

I was glad that April had not become jaded and cynical. When you take away a prostitute's wonder and innocence, what has she left? In April's case, three thousand dollars an hour. "I like to give full value for money," said April philosophically. "I don't ever want a client to walk away feeling either of us have given less than our all. Come what may."

I confess I am only human. I wanted to know what full value for five thousand rands a minute might entail. Alas, the cameras took us so far and no further. They say that April is the cruelest month, but May comes pretty close.

I was watching Cathouse (M-Net; Monday; 9.30pm), and my eyes were like saucers. Cathouse was the latest in M-Net's Monday-night documentaries, and what it lacked in point it made up in visuals. Using hidden cameras and interviews with the principal parties, the show took us behind the scenes at a legalised Nevada brothel. At least, I think I can call it a brothel. The owner, a portly man with florid jowls who dressed in black like an unwholesome Gary Player, or a sweaty Johnny Cash, had no problem with selling women to anyone with a credit card, but he drew the line at calling them prostitutes.

'We prefer to call them Working Girls'

"It's disrespectful to call them prostitutes," he said, using the sweat from his armpits to moisten his fingertips while he counted the evening's take. "We prefer to call them Working Girls."

It is always useful to be guided through the finer sensibilities of the sex-service industry. He didn't express his opinions on the political correctness of "brothel". Perhaps I should call it a labour exchange, or an employment agency, or the classified section. Only that may be disrespectful to working women who have jobs that don't actually entail passing on half their earnings to a man with chunky diamond rings and a rhinestone-studded belt buckle that says "Pimp".

As is fashionable nowadays, the documentary was at pains to portray the, eh, Working Girls as feminist heroes. So proud and confident and independently wealthy were they, you found yourself wondering why parents around the world don't pack their little Monicas and Ericas off to Prostitute School as soon as they are old enough to lie down and earn their own school fees.

One after the other, the ladies in the gauze kimonos and the spangled thongs took turns to tell the camera what a wonderland their work is.

"I just can't wait to get to work each day," said one dazzler, although to look at her dilated pupils and trembling hands, you couldn't escape the suspicion that she takes her work with her wherever she goes.

"I just think men are such wonderful creatures!" enthused another. That just gave the game away.

No one exposed day in and day out to men revealing their shadow sides could possibly believe that we are wonderful creatures. That stretches credulity too far.

We met a star turn named Sunset Thomas, who was preparing for an hour's honest labour. "Sunset", I am guessing, was not her real name, nor was it a particularly accurate description. In Nevada, as far as I am aware, the sun only goes down once a day. At any rate - and Sunset's rates were enough to take your breath away - she was warming up a pair of brothers who had arrived for the Happy Hour two-for-the-price-of-one special.

You could tell they were brothers because they wore identical Stetsons and moustaches. Also, they kept high-fiving each other and saying, "This is going to be great, bro!"

We were treated to some discussion about the services the brothers required. I can't in good conscience go into detail in a family newspaper, which may line the cages of perfectly decent and hitherto uncorrupted parrots, but I shall never look at a Stetson - or indeed a moustache - in the same way again. And I never looked all that favourably on them in the first place.

Having agreed on a threesome, the specifics of which would make a Frenchman blush, Sunset Thomas celebrated by kissing the first brother on the lips. She then turned to the other.

"No, no," he said, recoiling. "Wipe your lips before you kiss me! That's my brother's spit!"

It wasn't pretty, and the show itself was not especially illuminating. Despite the schoolboy titillation of peeking into brothel rooms once the doors have closed, there was nothing in this show to linger in the memory.

There were no points of view or insights or fresh takes; it was just PR for the Nevada whoring trade. I have no real inkling what a woman viewing such a show might think, but watching the endless chain of tremulous fellows with pudgy fingers come stomping in to pay their cash to live out their murky fantasies for an hour, I couldn't help feeling faintly depressed.

I had to watch Robot Wars (BBC Prime; weekdays; 5pm) for an antidote. Robot Wars is a show in which teams of - inevitably - men build radio-controlled robots on wheels, and have duels in a ramshackle arena.

Months of painstaking work in the garden shed with soldering iron and pliers take seconds to finish up in scrap metal and smoking ruin as "Destructo" puts the hammer to "MegaMouth II", or "Mr Roboto" upends "Smokin' Joe Brazier". And for no money whatsoever. It is all so charmingly, eccentrically pointless that you have to love it.

On Monday two retired schoolteachers in white umpires' coats and yellow goggles proved victorious. As they solemnly shook each other's hand in congratulation, I stopped feeling depressed.

Men can be awful, right enough, but wearing umpire's coats and yellow goggles and playing with mechanical robots, they can also be downright sweet.