Every media outlet in the world takes pleasure in airing footage or printing images of ‘harmless’ punch-ups, and this newspaper has to confess to doing the same.

The best punch-ups in history have to include every single outbreak of chaos in the Taiwanese parliament. With the advent of video streaming, their antics are all over the web, including the major news corporations such as BBC, Sky and CNN. With eggs and flour flying all over the place, the Taiwanese often adopt martial arts stances and the results can be quite hilarious, as well as impressive.

Perhaps another great puncher was Tony Blair’s deputy PM John Prescott who sucker punched a guy who had hit him with a flan. Sports punch-ups are also another favourite, with clips of full blown fights between players of ice-hockey, baseball or South American football featuring on the television.

Again, it was all very entertaining. The latest episode of punch-ups caught on camera comes from Russia. A newspaper owner Alexander Lebedev punched real estate magnate Sergei Polonsky during a recorded television show. Polonsky had inferred that he would like to hit someone, but Lebedev did it first. No warning, he just thumped him twice and sent him sprawling. Again, it does make very entertaining viewing, but where does one draw the line.

A punch-up is not the same as a riot. In a sense, they can be quite harmless as even the blows tend to be rather timid and comic, not leading to lasting damage. But it all boils down to one fundamental issue. No matter how funny or entertaining these things can be, there is absolutely no excuse for them.

There is no excuse for violence. Whether one is provoked or not, it is not the acceptable way to do things, and it reflects badly on a nation and its people, especially when such incidents generate international media coverage. Before looking at the state of other parliaments, we should also remember our own incidents in the House of Representatives. While Taiwan might seem funny now, the days of the 1980’s when incidents of aggressive crossing over the floor, are not so funny because they hit close to home.

The reader or viewer is king, so the news carries such items, just as they carry stories of matadors being gored, or stunts gone wrong. In short, the media reflects man’s fascination with the obscene, the unacceptable, the funny, the weird, the morbid.

Perhaps people want to read and watch such items because it reminds them that they are normal, that it is OK when things go wrong for other people, or they get lucky. Perhaps we are just fundamentally flawed and take pleasure when things are not going wrong for us, but are for others.