Sleeptyping...

I'm currently undertaking my own piece of scientific research into this field, with an investigation entitled "if you let Lauren fall asleep repeatedly onto a computer keyboard, she will eventually produce an article of great journalistic merit using her nose and chin".

The weakness of the study, however, is that I don't have an infinite amount of time or, indeed, 1,000 of me. There is barely half of me, and a Monday night deadline.

It could also be (cruelly) pointed out that the statistical probability of my producing an article of great journalistic merit when actually awake and fully functioning is pretty much slim-to-none, so when relying entirely on nose-keyboard co-ordination, you'd have better luck with the monkey.

The cause of this foray into the world of scientific reasoning, aside from a wish to enlighten the world about the concept of sleep-typing and its potential to revolutionise academia (unless drool shorts out your keyboard), is that I'm currently very tired. Extremely tired.

I feel as though someone has borrowed my eyeballs, used them as stoppers in bottles of vinegar and returned them shrivelled up like prunes (it should be noted that this calibre of metaphor can be achieved only when the subject has had Mrs Thatcher-esque quantities of sleep for the past month and is staying conscious entirely through Pro-plus tablets and jabbing themselves with sharp objects).

Currently, I have five consecutive nights of nocturnal debauchery (most of it taking place in kebab shops on Tottenham Court Road) piled up like a kind of sleep overdraft.

While a wiser woman might take a few early nights to pay off the debt, I just keep borrowing (an interestingly realistic representation of my money situation, actually), resorting to Red Bull, the Ocean Finance of sleep debt, to bail me out when I get desperate.

Falling asleep in lectures, that classic benchmark of student living, has become so common that we have a rota for elbowing one another awake when we start to snore.

It doesn't help that the rooms are always nap-perfect temperature and the subject matter less than gripping.

I am adamant that one professor, an endearingly gnome-like fellow with more enthusiasm for Anglo-Saxon English than I previously thought possible, should consider moonlighting as an insomnia cure.

And even when we decide to forgo clubbing for the comforts of F corridor for the night, we still stay up to a daft hour.

The trouble with communal living, other than shower curtain mildew and becoming familiar with other people's toilet habits, is that there is always something going on that provides a better alternative to sleep.

Just as you yawn, stretch and announce, "right kiddies, I'm going to Bedfordshire", someone will always decide to whip out a roast dinner/ giant Jenga/ pet terrapin and thus make it impossible to retire for the night, because if you do, you will be left out of "remember when '¦"

conversations for the next three years.

Furthermore, and I don't know if you've noticed this, even the most mundane of activities suddenly acquire an allure of novelty when you do them in the wee small hours of the morning.

It's a similar concept to the way that food always tastes better if eaten when sitting on damp grass in a cagoule, or the way that cheap and mediocre high-street clothes suddenly look chic and wonderful just because you're buying them abroad (they will always return to their former mediocre cheapness as soon as you get them back on British soil).

Suddenly, doing the London Lite crossword is riveting entertainment '“ six down, "your new best friend" (eight letters, looks suspiciously like it could be "caffeine").

Another obstacle to getting my eight hours is that, in London, everything is always open.

Bookshops; chemists; that suspicious-looking "sauna and massage" parlour down my road.

When you consider that in Worthing everything other than Wetherspoons is shut by 6pm, it is no wonder I was always rested and healthy.

Nobody offered me sushi at 2am, because the town is tucked up snugly in bed after Newsnight. Frustrating though it may be to have to limit your consumer habits to daylight hours, consider yourselves lucky, folks.

Now I'm sporting under-eye bags big enough to do a Tesco shop in '“ which, of course, I can whenever I fancy, because it's open 24 hours a day.

So while I'm perfecting the art of nocturnal living, I hope you're all enjoying nice, long nights of quality REM.

And don't be surprised if next week's column looks like this: hhhfggggggggggggytn8j. The sleep-typing investigation could be continuing for a while.