I have a new guilty pleasure. Annoyingly I suffer from bouts of sleeplessness when I will wake in the early hours a few nights in a row.

The time I wake will be determined from the first night of the run but it will always be precisely on the hour with a tendency to kick in at 3am.

From then on it will be impossible to return to the joy of sleep. Nothing works. I’ve tried lavender spray, milky drinks, lullabies, counting, sleeping pills – the lot. I toss and turn restlessly until finding myself falling back into a deep and blissful slumber exactly ten minutes before I need to get up.

Well I used to. Instead of tossing and turning through a run of sleepless nights, my new little vice is 24-hour TV.

Being brought up in a house where turning the box on during the daytime was considered slovenly it does feel very decadent, although 24-hour TV was unimaginable in my youth. We thrived on just three channels and few programmes. Try channel hopping at 10am and you were likely to find two test cards and a Western.

Nothing was ever broadcast after around 11.30pm, when the dulcet tones residing behind the rotating globe would wish one and all a very safe and pleasant night.

Then the national anthem would play (everyone could boast an Uncle Arnold who would stand respectfully for the duration) and then there was a big fat nothing. Just hours of nothing but a white dot and a droning noise.

Then you would switch off the television and unplug it at the socket. Everything was turned off at the plug then. We lived in fear (well, I did) of exploding electrical goods in those days. I never heard of a single incident to verify such warnings but our parents were mistrustful of electricity.

Before our annual week’s holiday at the coast my Dad would insist on turning the electric off at the mains, meaning my Mum would have to defrost the fridge freezer and plan our meals several days before we left around its contents. But back to the TV... I am delighted to have discovered the joys of sofa surfing in the early hours. I say joys, maybe I should say ploys. Judging from the amount of shopping channels in operation in appears to be a good time to get us to get our credit cards out – when we’re sleep-weary and vulnerable.

Similarly, you can always find a show in live play where you phone in to win thousands. I tried it once. The lines were too busy to get through and I got charged a few quid for the pleasure of being told to try again later – when will I learn.

Apart from that there are numerous channels showing gloriously dull old shows and sitcoms that should never see the light of day again.

But that’s the beauty, everything is so dire it’s a real tonic. It’s so boring that before long I have dozed off and re-entered the blissful world of dreams. Works every time.