Traditionally Christmas has meant turkey and all the trimmings, church services and present giving. For almost anyone under about 50, you have to add television.

Many families have fond memories of watching anything from blockbuster films of a few years ago to the Queen's annual broadcast to the nation and a comedy special from Morecambe and Wise.

But not me. Am I alone in never having watched a film on television and never wanting to, especially at Christmas? Dare I say Morecambe and Wise were possibly the two unfunniest men ever to have appeared anywhere, let alone on screen? And isn't it true the Queen comes over as charmless, stiff and wooden in her platitudinous preaching?

Television has been one of the great influences on the 20th Century but not on me. I never had one until my late 20s and even now seldom watch anything except the news. If that's on, I always have a newspaper at hand to read through the boring bits.

I watch the news because it is immediate and it can give you views of people not possible to get through still photographs, such as Margaret Thatcher's funny duck-like walk and the dignity of Nelson Mandela.

But it is hard to say much more for the news, which I find infuriating slow. Unlike reading newspapers, you cannot get it on to your own personal speed, in my case is fast. I sit there shouting at Peter Sissons: "Get on with it."

Yet there is no depth to the news and the words involved would not cover the front page of a broadsheet newspaper.

As for the regional news, it is pathetic. It covers a region of no cohesion, whether on commercial TV or BBC, with presentation which is often painfully amateur. It should be put out of its misery now.

TV is watched because it is easy. It requires no effort, energy, imagination or intellectual power. For every half decent programme thrust at the viewers every week or so, there are hours, or days of pap.

What is so sad is most people spend almost as much time watching television as they do working. This constant diet of stale quiz shows, ancient films, violent cartoons and formula sitcoms rots the brain and warps the mind.

But the good news is that the day of TV may soon be over. Viewing has been steadily decreasing during the Nineties and Christmas Day figures have been exceptionally disappointing, at least to the telly moguls.

Just as TV came along in the Sixties to knock cinemas and national newspapers, so the Internet, videos, home computers and mobile phones have arrived to blunten the impact of the box in the corner.

TV will not go away but will have to change, probably for the better, although it seems to be terribly slow about it. Stations will have to stop being regional, and possibly national, and become really local to interest people in what is going on about them.

So tuck into the turkey this Christmas, go to the pantomime during the holiday and do anything else but watch the telly. You'll feel much better for it.

This century, or certainly the last 50 years, has belonged to the BBC and the commercial TV companies. The 21st Century assuredly will not and almost anything that will take its place will be an improvement.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.