If you want to find out about computer games from the television, probably your best bet is Channel 4's GamesMaster. But have you seen the new series? We rang überpresenter and multimedia personality Dominik Diamond and asked him what he ought he was playing at.

PCG: Right. What I'd like to talk to you about is the new series of GamesMaster.

DD: Okey-doke, that's cool.

PCG: What went wrong, Dominik?

DD (surprised tone): What went wrong?

PCG: Mm. Nice intro sequence, shame about the rest of the show.

DD: Do you not like it?

PCG: Couldn't say as we do. I couldn't remember something about it last night, so I asked half of Future Publishing - home of the country's biggest name in video games magazine publishing, including the GamesMaster magazine - if they'd seen any of the new series (and it is heir job, sort of). Not a single person had.

DD (curt): So? Do you think I give a shit? I don't get paid per audience member watching, I get paid regardless. If they don't watch, ("Pluck" - Ed) 'em, it's their loss.

PCG: The viewing figures would seem to suggest hat most other people are suffering the same loss.

DD: Okay. Neighbours gets, what, 14 million viewers, Match Of The Day gets about two or three. know what I'd rather watch.

PCG: Well, yes. I like football, beer and girls as nuch as the next disembodied vocal spirit of a magazine, but Match Of The Day doesn't go on about video games all the time. Why does GamesMastcr all seem to be about football, beer and girls, with video games thrown in at the end if here's time? It's not so much GamesMaster as )ominik And His Pals' Babe-Ogling Half Hour.

DD: No it is not!

PCG: Oh come on. Jadene from Don't Forget Your Toothbrush playing that skiing game was the most gratuitous thing we've seen on TV since The Word stopped.

DD: Well, of course, we had her on for one reason and one reason alone, which was to get her backside w&jgling on that screen. But what you've got to realise is that we have to satisfy the needs of the audience, as minuscule as it may be, and if your audience is 12- to 18-year-old boys, then you've got to hope, for the future of the nation, that most of them are interested in women.

PCG: Yes, but there are plenty of opportunities to see women's backsides on TV elsewhere. There are really only two video game shows, so there's precious little screen time to waste on window dressing, however attractively-dressed that window might be.

DD: I think you'll find GamesMaster still is about video games. We've had more exclusives on this series so far than any other games show in Britain. We're the only show that ftatures the latest arcade games for a start. But for every Chart Show you've got to have a Tube. Ten or twenty years from now, people will be sitting in the pub, saying "("Clucking dell" - Ed), wasn't that an unbelievable show?" They certainly won't be sitting there talking about Bad Influence.

PCG: At least when Bad Influence do game reviews, you get the game on screen and a little box in the corner with the reviewer in it, not the other way round. I mean, what's more important, video games or Dave Perry's face?

DD: I'd still rather know what agames journalist thought of a game than what some nine-year-old kid thinks. I actually wanted to do it like Jukebox Jury this series, but they wouldn't let me. What you've got to remember is that we have a tiny budget. Time and filming constraints, etc, etc.

PCG: So why was half of the first show devoted to some 6-month-old babies gurgling around on screen and crying?

DD: Well, personally I would think that was one of the finest television moments I've ever seen in my life. I thought it was great!

PCG: It was quite a funny idea, but it just went on and on and on.

DD: Well, I disagree. And out on the streets, I've been absolutely amazed at the amount offtedback we've been getting on this series. Everyone says it's much better than the last series. You can't treat games in isolation, they're part of popular culture, and you have to bring other popular culture elements in, whether it's fit birds or babies.

PCG: Babies are popular culture?

DD: Oh yes! Babies are the new rock'n'roll!

PCG: Hmm. Why do you hate Bad Influence so much? With so few game shows on TV, and with the two of you not being in any kind of competition with each other, shouldn't you be supporting each other a bit?

DD: Well, I just hate people with lisps. And asexual women.

PCG: So, GamesMaster - tapping into Britain rich vein of suppressed body fascism?

DD: We're for people who can't afford the subscription to the Playboy Channel.