When it comes to TV, I'll take it or leave it. Photograph: Nicholas Rigg/Getty
Watching TV during the week was a real struggle - I just wanted to be out. Yet I think I finally discovered the meaning of TV at about 3.30pm yesterday, otherwise known as Dancing with the Stars or the American version of Strictly Come Dancing. Groundbreaking, challenging or provocative it wasn't. But I needed a reason to stay in bed and this wasn't a bad one. One and a half hours of watching attractive men and women fling each other across a dancefloor was, frankly, quite enjoyable. A little later on I tuned into David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth - more great hangover fodder, but unlike the Dancing one, fascinating and informative.
The beauty of both shows was that I would never watch these events live. Without TV, images caught on Life in the Undergrowth wouldn't exist. Watching Heather Mills do the samba or seeing garden slugs fornicate will not affect me in the same way a documentary or an emotional appeal does, but TV doesn't have to change your life. I wouldn't have rung all my mates up to say, "Watch this", but for a split second I forgot about work, relationships, life etc.
Working in an environment where you are constantly surrounded by news, I find, makes it hard to switch off and watch things that aren't connected with what is happening right now. I am forever on Facebook, checking my emails or on the phone, and the TV has always been one of those things that doesn't seem part of the real world.
Yet with the increase of reality cookery and property programmes, so many more of my male friends seem to have taken an interest in what they eat, or how they decorate their homes. Some people don't read tabloids or gossip mags, and some people won't go near Big Brother, but it's often fluffier programmes that draw in the biggest audience, so maybe sometimes that's what we need.
Should TV controllers have a responsibility to their viewers not to constantly churn out lowest common denominator stuff, just like a newspaper editor should strive for its publication to bring us accurate and honest material? Or is it OK to enjoy such easy, simple viewing?
When it comes to TV, I'll take it or leave it. I've certainly taken on board from your comments that there are some good series out there. (Heroes and Arrested Development are in my bag.) But there always seem to be so many better things to do. Take Boggle for example - that's what I'll be playing tonight. If you haven't got a set, you can always download the Facebook application.
I'm sorry if, after a week of TV, I sound a little nonplussed - but that's what it did to me.
