In a world of innate stupidity, blunder and mind-numbing madness, I was pleased to see one piece of hope last week embedded in all the news of doom and gloom. What was that, you may ask? An end to famine? An end to violence and war? An end to Noel's House Party? We are not yet that civilised or humane, but at least the news about the couple who got married via a computer shows some common sense.

Our reactions to it, however, didn't. Lots of people were up in arms at the thought of two strangers meeting on their wedding day. It makes a mockery of marriage they said, and admittedly the wedding rings bearing the engraving "96.4FM BRMB" in honour of the Birmingham commercial radio station which organised the event were tacky, along with the fact that their honeymoon will be accompanied by a tabloid newspaper reporter and a fly-on-the-wall documentary team.

But if it were not for the publicity stunts, this wedding would not have been front page news. In certain cultures it is a dying, but nonetheless inadmissible, feature that couples do not see each other until the day of the ceremony.

This has little to do with religion and more with some fearful notion that if a pretty young girl or handsome young man sees the chronologically/aesthetically intellectually challenged (i.e. old, ugly, thick) person before the wedding they will scream 'no!' before hurling themselves off the nearest mountain top in disgust or prefer to spend the rest of their days in the company of a nanny goat called Noori rather than with their intended.

Though our religion clearly states that men can marry whoever they like as long as they are women and chaste, and women cannot be chased around being forced to marry someone they don't like, a small percentage of people think they know better and have come up with cunning ways of getting around this - they show you someone else's photograph.

Hmm, you look at the devilishly handsome picture of a young, cool dude and doesn't he seem a smidgen familiar? It's only when you watch the blockbusting movie Titanic you realise that they have sent you a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio. You shouldn't get too excited and think you are going to spend the rest of your days with a Leo lookalike, in real life your fella will have a beer- belly, a double chin down to his knees, nasal hair down to his shoulders and a love of Brylcreem. "Love is blind" your elders will tell you.

Yes, but I'm not, you reply before hurling yourself off the nearest mountain.

Even if you like the look of someone it doesn't mean you are going to get on with each other. You are not going to spend the rest of your life gazing into each other's eyes - you probably will have to say something at some point such as: "Hello". Or, "Get a job". And then watch the sparks fly.

But if you have your hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes matched up on the computer then surely you are bound to be compatible. You would have lots in common - and maybe even some sense. And I think that really should be front page news and worth celebrating.

Others may argue that computer marriages mean that romance is dead. Yes, but at least you won't be.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.