I did try. Some people I have a dialogue with let me know they’d be on X Factor last night…..

By the time I got to switch on, the host was telling people not to go away, because an ad-break was imminent. Then came the ads. Then a lengthy instruction for people to get onto expensive phone lines and to “make a difference”. It is a pounding, mind-numblingly concentrated hard and loud sell, an unstoppable cycle back and forth between shouty ads and shouty exhortations to spend money on the ‘phone. Totally relentless. Your choice is to spend on the advertisers’ products… or to spend on the premium phone lines. Ads. Phone lines. One. Or the other. By what stretch of the imagination is this bullying- an-audience-into-parting-with-money….. entertainment?