Could you give up watching TV for a week? Battling great temptations - Celebrity Big Brother among them - Shane Hegarty pulls the plug

Could I go a week without television, asked The Irish Times. No problem. Seven days. A chance to catch up on some reading, listen to some music, maybe nip out to the theatre. Great. Should be fine.

Researchers sometimes ask families to go without television for a month to see how they react. They very often don't make it past a few days. It's baffling. How could someone not go for a short spell without the box? How could someone be so weak-willed, so weak-minded as to be able to resist the lure of television for a sliver of their lifespan? All of this was in my mind as, only four days into my own week without TV, I was to be found slumped on the sofa, yelling at Michael Barrymore to stop crying on Celebrity Big Brother.

I used to watch a lot of TV, but had the good excuse of being the Irish Times television reviewer. During four years as a professional telly addict, my house had four television sets scattered around it. At least, it did until one was nicked from its perch just inside the back door - something I tried not to take as a personal criticism. Two of the televisions were attached to video recorders.

With a notepad on my knee, I watched dramas, documentaries, comedies, soaps, sports, reality TV, reconstructions, deconstructions. I watched The Big Bow Wow long after everyone else had turned over to something else. I was a veteran of four Big Brothers, two I'm A Celebrities and one Inside 252. I witnessed The Lyrics Board episode in which Twink sang Like a Virgin, but I never asked for compassionate leave.

When it became obvious that too many nights out were being spoiled by my fretting over whether I'd make it home in time to catch a two-hour Robson Green drama on ITV, it was time to give it up. It's a year since I handed over the remote control to Hilary Fannin, during which time I've often been asked if I miss it. Not at all, I tell people. I have my evenings back. The sitting room floor is no longer littered with video tapes. I have no idea what Robson Green is doing these days. I watch what I want to watch and am no longer a slave to the red circles that used to pattern my television listings magazine.

I'd usually add, smugly, that I hardly watch it at all any more. I watch Lost - which replaced 24 as a weekly fixture - and BBC2's superb hospital drama, Bodies. I watch the news, I'd say, and old episodes of Seinfeld. After Sky television cold-called so often that I threatened to cancel my subscription, it sounded like such a good idea that I've decided to ditch Sky Sports. Apart from all that, I told people, I don't watch much at all.

All lies, it turns out. As soon as I decided not to watch any television for a week I realised how much I actually watch, how often; the set just flickers away in the corner, keeping the atmosphere warm. I catch the headlines first thing in the morning. I'll often start my evening by hunting for Simpsons episodes.

At night I surf the satellite channels so often that I know on which station you're likely to find Cheryl Baker selling ornate globes, or where you can bet on virtual horseracing. I know where Audi cars have their own channel, and where you can find US college football. I know that across several channels there is a thing called Bikini Beach, in which young ladies implore viewers to call and solve the simple word puzzle that's on the screen. And I know that no one ever seems to.

Before entering television detox, I checked the TV listings to reassure myself that there was little worth missing.

Sure enough, there wasn't much on. A new series of Desperate Housewives; the penultimate episode of Lost, but not much else. I wasn't that bothered with Celebrity Big Brother. It would hurt to miss Ricky Gervais interviewing Larry David. And that new series, My Name is Earl, looked promising. As did the sci-fi drama Invasion. And the Sweeney Todd drama starring Ray Winstone. And there were all those FA Cup matches . . . I put the TV listings in the bin.

The first thing that you should know if you are planning to quit television is that it is very hard to avoid.

Society is casually addicted. There are televisions above supermarket queues, at train stations, even in some garages while you pump your petrol. Airports have them while you wait for your flight and then loiter for your luggage. Visit friends or relatives, and the television will be on. In hospitals, the ward televisions blare. In nursing homes they boom out across the hallways. The pub has surrendered to television: Sky News during the day, Sky Sports at night.

A place I go to for lunch usually has VH1 on a big screen above the bar, even when the stereo will be playing different music. It seems to be on for no reason other than because people expect it, as if their senses might feel that they haven't been assaulted enough by the blaring techno.

It could be worse. In Liverpool, a square by a shopping centre in the city centre has a television screen larger than many shopping centres. People stand and stare up at it, somewhat entranced, as their frozen pizzas defrost in half-forgotten shopping bags.

It is so pervasive we hardly even recognise it as an addiction. Ask yourself how many times you have kept the television on even when a guest has arrived in the house. And how often, when it has become an irritant to the conversation, have you turned it down rather than off?

Research tests have found that people watching television tended to be more relaxed than when they turned it off. However, feelings of lowered alertness and passivity continued afterwards, suggesting that television sucks the energy from the viewer. They begin to associate television with relaxation.

When you are slumped silently in front of the box after a hard day's work, you won't need anyone to tell you this.

The Irish are particularly hooked. Some 53 per cent of households have three televisions or more (I thought this an absurd amount of televisions for a person to have until I realised that I was one of those people), and 84 per cent of us watch television every day. We watch more television than our European neighbours, although if you've seen European television you'll understand why.

Children watch an average of two-and-a-half hours' TV a day, which is enough to be a contributory factor in an obesity epidemic. So it's surprising to hear that they are watching less than they used to. Surveys are showing that both Irish children and young adults are turning off their television, or at least the television programmes.

It would be nice to think that they're going outside to kick a ball around, or that they're deep in a book, but they're not. PlayStation, and X-Box, have had a major impact, but they are also drifting towards a different screen altogether.

And during the week when I was supposed to go without television I did the same. Since giving up being a professional couch potato, I have, to an extent, become a "mouse potato". On my web browser, there's a StumbleUpon button that leads me to websites it knows will be of specific interest to me. Spending an hour or two clicking that little button is channel surfing of sorts, except the channels are coming down a broadband line and not into the back of a television set.

So much television makes it onto the web that it poses deep issues for the couch philosopher as to whether it counts as watching television if you're doing so at the click of a mouse. RTÉ breaks its news bulletins into handy chunks and puts them online. Anything particularly important tends to become a viral hit, doing the rounds of blog sites and e-mails. I missed FA Cup matches, but there were highlights online.

If I had really wanted to, I could have downloaded the week's episode of Lost or Desperate Housewives (plus, while I was at it, the episodes that have only shown in the US).

It's noticeable how much people stare at a computer rather than television screen. Increasingly, water cooler conversations don't begin with "did you see?", but "have you downloaded?". Of late, I've had far more conversations about Google Earth than about EastEnders.

Until last week, when I suddenly became attuned to the office conversations. For the record, in The Irish Times this week, people were talking about the last episode of Rome, Ricky Gervais meeting Larry David and the first episode of Celebrity Big Brother. Adapt your preconceptions of the Irish Times staff if you feel the need.

None of this bothered me too much for a few days, although I was beginning to feel blinded by the blackout. When the Charles Kennedy story broke I really wanted to see his expression to add to the words I was hearing on the radio. And I had to block my ears and run screaming from anyone who started a conversation with the words, "Can you believe what happened in Lost last night?"

But at home, it became increasingly intolerable. I was happy to accept the mission of taking a week off television. Not being a paid employee of The Irish Times, my wife was understandably less inclined. You really do need a mass boycott for something like this to work. It's all very well listening to the radio in another room, or disappearing to the office to read or surf the web, but there's only so long you can hold out against both a bit of social interaction and the plaintive mumble of the television seeping from the next room.

Come Friday night, feeling too tired to read, I had rather forlornly taken my glass of wine to my office and was killing time filling my MP3 player with music. It's no way to spend an evening. So I cracked, and found myself hypnotised by the bright shiny object in the corner of the living room. And if Friday night with the missus, a glass of wine and Celebrity Big Brother is hardly the most thrilling way to relax after a week of work, running around after a child, and housework (admittedly in an advisory capacity), believe me when I say it's better than a glass of wine, alone in front of a PC.

I had missed the good programmes, but fallen at the lowest fence. My TV-free week was blemished. I am weak-willed. I am weak-minded. But I know Michael Barrymore's diary room secrets. Forgive me, Big Brother, for I have sinned. It has been three days since I last watched television . . .