MY GUILTY SECRETS. OODLES OF PRIMARK UNDERWEAR, HEAT MAGAZINE, AND...

F you were paying attention to last week's offering (you're probably a rare breed, possibly limited only to my friend Hannah's hairdresser, for whose readership I am always very grateful), you will know that I've had a lot of sleepless nights recently.

What you won't know is that the nights I've spent battling the moth population of Worthing, though grisly and often reminiscent of a low-budget Hitchcock remake, have been nonetheless productive because they introduced me to the genius that is ITV Play.

As far as I can discern, the people at ITV Play have three main objectives:

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1) To ensure that shift workers, new parents, insomniacs and students have suitable distraction during the wee small hours to prevent them from all turning to the Open University, becoming fantastically adept at quantum physics and realising that ITV has no true use in the modern world;

2) To provide employment for former Big Brother contestants and Hollyoaks actors who have fallen on hard times;

3) To make a disgustingly vast amount of money.

It is, essentially, the shopping channel for people who've already bought everything from the shopping channel and now need to win back all the money they spent on yoghurt makers and fleeces with arctic wolf motifs on them.

Except that they never will win back all the money because, in my (extensive) experience, the standard call goes something like this:-

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Overly Perky Presenter: "Hi there Jean in Slough, thanks for ringing again! The clue is 'The Wizard of _______ blank'.

For 450 and a free novelty lampshade, what's your answer?"

Nervous Caller High On Caffeine: "um'¦er'¦Oz?"

Overly Perky Presenter: "I'm SORRY, the answer was 'courgettes'. Better luck next time, Jean!"

And, believe me, there will be a next time, because poor Jean is now hooked.

Of course, in order to reach this illusive stage of limitless opportunity and a neon-lit Brian Dowling, the unfortunate caller must first shell out so much dough in dead-end phone calls that they are, in effect, in the game for only the novelty lampshade.

But this is not the point.

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In fact, one commonly reaches a point where handing over your kids' college fund to the folks at ITV seems the least you can do in exchange for their gift to you '“ namely drawing you so deep into their kitschy world of cash that suddenly it's 4am and you might as well not go to sleep at all.

Think of all you can achieve in the doily-crocheting/toenail-painting/toasted-sandwich-innovation arena with those spare hours.

Heck, I've used it to write most of these articles.

The fact is, however much I mock it, I love terrible TV.

I love it like a best friend who will never judge me because they've always done worse.

I used to love it in the same way I love Heat magazine and bulk-buying Primark underwear, as a vice to binge on only every so often because it makes me feel guilty and queasy afterwards, but now after an entire summer spent in my pyjamas watching marathons of My Super Sweet 16 and Tiara Girls on MTVUK (a channel which, these days, tends to make ITV2 look like the televisual equivalent of a James Joyce novel), I appear to have developed immunity to their more repellent aspects.

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I can devour an entire afternoon of back-to-back episodes without the slightest twinge of nausea.

Trash TV is my new drug of choice, and I've gone hardcore.

In five days, however, I'm going cold turkey.

In a process that by rights deserves an MTV slot of its own (maybe called Strictly No Deal or No Deal Fever, for want of a less confusing title), I'm embarking on an entire term of uni without TV.

The sweats and shakes are setting in as I have a meagre 120 hours in which to cram as much tasteless, mindless, sequins-and-collagen telly as possible before I am cut off.

Casting an eye over the next few months' scheduling is enough to make a girl weep'¦a new series of Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, every episode from every season of Sex and the City on Paramount Comedy, David Tennant being deliciously Scottish on Who Do You Think You Are?, the chance to see if The Charlotte Church Show will ever truly deserve the place I've reserved it in my heart'¦

I've lost sight of why I'm doing a degree at all now.

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Addiction aside, it does seem wrong to be a student who is TV-teetotal.

What, after all, is studentdom about if not watching Jeremy Kyle with a bowl of supernoodles at breakfast time?

No, the abstinence plan seems doomed to fail.

Instead, I think I'll use the next five nights to see if I can't win the money to pay for the licence on ITV Play.

And a novelty lampshade will always come in handy.

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