I counted them all in and I counted them all out again . . . and most of the women emerging, shook, from that hellish place greeting the assembled ignoramuses (ignorami? George would know) by waving energetically with both hands. Chantelle looked as though she'd been doing it all her life and coming from Essex, maybe she had. But round these parts, we're strictly single limb wavers.

To be honest, I'm embarrassed even doing that . . . so much so that I avoided entering Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? for years on account of the waving at the camera bit at the start. Eventually, pure greed allowed me to overcome the waving thing . . . though sheer bad luck ensured it would never come to a head in any event.

But Celebrity Big Brother, which brings with it only the promise of a career crashlanding, just wouldn't have the same appeal.

There are other reasons why I couldn't have gone in there, though my lack of celebrity isn't one of them. As we saw this year, there are now people in Celebrity Big Brother who've never heard of themselves, let alone each other. But I just couldn't cope with the sheer idleness of the place.

At best, I would have been a Michael Barrymore character in there (though without the medication and the murky past), obsessively cooking and cleaning even when there patently wasn't anything left to cook or clean.

At worst, I would have simply gone mad, deprived of all stimulus and distraction.

Part of me loves the idea of being cast away for three weeks, but it's the part that gazes in despair at the pile of unread books and newspapers on my shelves and dreams of more hours in the day. The idea of imposed idleness without books is torture in itself;

the company of idiots would render it absolutely unbearable.

Which brings me to the third reason why I can't ever go there. Faced with the scenario I describe above, I would, with depressing inevitability, devote my time to the pursuit of alcohol and when it was made available to me, I'd go stone mad on it. See that Traci when she got a bit saucemuddled? That's nothing. That's me on the first night, that is.

Finally, I would swear like a platoon.

Years ago, my old mucker Louis Walsh was invited to take part in one of those Candid Camera type scenarios, and decided he would bring me for lunch where the waiter would proceed to go a bit mad and I . . . the stooge . . . would react accordingly. Only when they all sat down to hatch their devilish plot, it was unanimously agreed that I would use too much bad language for anyone's comfort level.

I must admit that I was quite shocked when I learnt this, though as I pointed out to my would-be setter-upper, bad language would have been the least of the problems RTE would have had to face. Anyway, the point is that I couldn't take part in any kind of reality show because I'd need to read and cuss and in the absence of either pleasure, I'd have to get horribly drunk.

Also, I'd miss my kids terribly and since they still haven't forgiven me for going to the theatre a couple of times last year, they'd never speak to me again. So more George Galloway than Michael Barrymore then. Which is reason in itself, when you think about it.

University challenge The best bit of being past the CAO deadline is that the airwaves are finally free from all those Come-Into-My-College ads that clogged everything up for the past month. Maybe it's just me, but I can't recall the universities ever touting for business in such a commercial way before.

But this year, every time I turned on the radio, I was invited to become a scientist or a primary school teacher or to spend three years in the city of culture and crack (Cork, as it happens. Who knew? ).

It's all a far cry from the days when the CAO forms were so complicated that cracking the Da Vinci Code would have been an easier and quicker career option (I saw a trailer for that in the cinema the other day, by the way. Looks shite).

Back then, we were pretty much discouraged from going to any college on the basis that, during the economically depressed 1980s, it was bound to end in tears. Now, they're as brazen as the banks in touting for our custom.

Only Trinity College seems above the temptations of mammon. Unless that ad in Polish is actually for Trinity and they're just being smart-arsed about it. Which frankly, would surprise nobody.

Do the Croker croak Given that the prospect of playing 'God Save The Queen' in Croke Park seems to be an Armageddon scenario for so many, while others are clearly regarding it as the culmination of their lives' work . . . why don't we just agree to play it really badly?

Perhaps we could prevail upon the Artane Boys to start it in an unsuitable key, or the Garda Band to do a sort of 'Benny Hill' version of it. Failing that, we could ask pretty much any You're A Star finalist to take a stab at it. It's all about compromise, a chairde.