I have always thought that if you want a quick idea of what makes a certain country tick, you should head for the television and switch on their soap operas.

Coronation Street tends to throw up what the English hold dear – community, the local boozer, people faking their own death in a freak yet vaguely plausible canoeing accident – while Dallas and Dynasty were surely the epitome of brash 1980s American capitalism. I’m not sure what that says about Hollyoaks, but there always has to be an exception that proves the rule.

South Africa boasts two main soaps – Mzansi in the tea-time slot that used to be populated in England by Neighbours, and still is if you’re one of those people desperate enough to acknowledge the existence of Channel Five, and Generations, in EastEnders-style prime time.

Both appear on the flagship state channel, SABC 1, and both open a little bit of a window onto the way South Africa would like to see itself.

Mzansi seems to be the more youth-oriented of the two, and features a number of hip, upwardly-mobile black South African families making their way in the world.

A couple of the leading characters are lawyers, one works in a hospital and a few are either at university or college. If there is any poverty, it happens where the camera doesn’t film.

It looks and feels American, but just as the media’s portrayal of black America tends to be skewed in one direction or the other, so Mzansi’s presentation of black South Africa doesn’t appear to ring too close to the truth.

There is an emerging black middle-class in South Africa but it incorporates a tiny proportion of the overall black population, is concentrated almost exclusively in specific urban areas and is as irrelevant to the everyday lives of most black citizens, as is the day-to-day existence of a majority of whites.

So it is interesting that one of the country’s leading television programmes choose to present such a social group as the norm. Even more interestingly, all the young blacks I have spoken to seem to love it. They know it is unrealistic but regard it as harmless escapism. Perhaps it is.

Generations is aimed at an older audience, and on the evidence of the five or six shows I’ve seen, offers a more nuanced portrayal of present-day South Africa.

For a start, there are families who live in the country, and some who live in the city. There are also much wider gaps in terms of age, lifestyle and wealth between leading characters, although any effort to address political issues tends to be piecemeal at best.

Both shows attempt to show harmony between races as the norm, and promote integration and understanding at every available opportunity.

They make for instructive viewing, but don’t appear particularly real or representative. Maybe, like most English soaps, they’re not really meant to be.

What they also share in common, however, is an obsession about plots relating to the World Cup. Mzansi’s leading characters wanted to try to get tickets, one of the families in Generations wanted to make money from visiting tourists.

Just another example of the extent to which all elements of South African life and culture have embraced this tournament as their own. Get ready for Jack Duckworth touting tickets for Old Trafford in 2018.

* It was impossible to move on Port Elizabeth’s beach front on the evening before England’s game with Slovenia. Nothing surprising about that you might think, with thousands of England supporters in town.

It didn’t take long, however, to discover that the focus of attention was a beach front bar with loud dance music pumping out of it. And once inside, it took even less time to work out that the guy playing it was famed English DJ Fatboy Slim.

On the evening of the draw with Algeria in Cape Town, he played a sold-out set to thousands of South Africans in the Cape Town International Convention Centre. Having decided to head to Port Elizabeth for the final group game, he decided it would be a good idea to play another gig, this time an impromptu get-together for England fans.

I seem to remember having a fairly decent time, and on the evidence of the headache that’s accompanied me to the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium this morning, I don’t think my memory is playing tricks on me yet.

* Apart from comparing headaches, the other discussion among England supporters yesterday morning was the possible connotations of second-round games.

Win the group, and it’s two days to get to Rustenburg. Finish second and how on earth do you get to Bloemfontein? Lose, and it’ll be straight on to the BA website to see when we can afford a flight home.

For all the criticism that has been thrown at them down the years, England’s travelling supporters never fail to impress. You only hope the players appreciate just how much time, money and effort goes into following them as they invariably implode at major tournaments all around the globe.