Whitehaven switchover: the end of analogue TV is nigh

So where will you be when the great analogue TV switch-off begins? I know where I'll be - in a hotel room in Whitehaven, where it all kicks off in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

Well, "kicks off" might not be the most appropriate way of describing it. The 25,000 residents of the Cumbrian seaside town will be the first to have their analogue signal switched off, beginning with BBC2 at 2am on Wednesday, October 17.

The rest of the analogue signal in Whitehaven will be switched off in four weeks' time. By then the estimated 5,000 people in town who are yet to convert to digital will either have bought a set-top box or be very, very irritated indeed.

Whitehaven switchover is the first, very small step in a five-year process that will see the entire country convert to digital TV by 2012.

Such are the complexities involved in converting this small town that at the moment it is hard to imagine how the government is going to successfully switch the entire nation.

The good news is that culture secretary James Purnell and Digital UK - the body charged with promoting digital take-up - are giving themselves a whole year to learn the lessons of Whitehaven. Let's hope that lesson is not "don't do it - it's too bleedin' complicated".

Anyway, back to Wednesday morning, when the BBC2 analogue signal will disappear just after the snooker and immediately before the start of the BBC Learning Zone.

I can only hope that the channel's coverage of day five of the snooker grand prix at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre doesn't over-run. That would be REALLY frustrating.

I will be in Whitehaven in the run-up to switchover, as well as the day after, just to make sure nothing falls from the sky and viewers don't take to the streets in the form of a mass protest: "What do we want? BBC2! How do we want to watch it? Through an old-fashioned analogue TV aerial with none of this set-top box nonsense!"