NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED RTE 2, Thursday THIS couch suffers from a form of insomnia. Or possibly stupidity, it's hard to tell.

It's a burden previously identified by Jerry Seinfeld, a kind of piecemeal sleep. Basically around midnight my body starts shutting down in stages. From the moment feet are lifted from the floor to the couch they fall asleep, and this inertia creeps until the brain is also snoozing, or is at the very least numb to the nonsense on television.

Eventually, the only part actually awake is the finger operating the remote control.

It's a pretty common affliction. Man is no longer a hunter and gatherer, just a channel flicker. We're not really interested in what's on TV, we're more interested in what else might be on.

And so the minutes and hours stretch out and the dent beneath you on the couch deepens. Alright, it's more stupidity than insomnia but they really ought to give a name to that thing where you're never more tired than when you have to get up.

But the nice thing about Sky Sports News in the small hours of the morning is that even they get bored with the loop they are stuck on. As the hours advance they gradually move away from just presenting the goals of the day and start showing more throwaway asides. Such as an interview with Roy Keane being asked, in the wake of Sunderland's draw with Stoke on Tuesday, where he felt the result left his side in the title race? With that trademark mischievous half-smile playing on his face, Keane replied: "Third. It leaves us in third."

Still, whether there is actually enough sports news to support a 24hour channel is debatable, and as soon as they start showing meaningless fluff pieces on a woman selling scarves at the Cricket World Cup you know they have nothing left to say and you're wasting your time even more than usual. Click.

Now, speaking to you from this glass house, having an interest in sport and a finger that can click away by itself is not much of a skills set, so it was remarkable to see that the various candidates on No Experience Required thought it was all they needed to become a sports photographer. They got a rude awakening. Inpho Sports Photography threw open their doors to hopeful candidates and by the end of the programme you were left with a distinct feel of what a difficult job it is.

Far from pointing and clicking, you need a good knowledge of sport, along with instinct and timing to capture height-of-action moments, but also the discipline to know what you are snapping and to stay focused.

While most sports fans love the idea of sitting on the sideline for major sporting occasions, it's a fact of life that photographers are working so hard they rarely get to 'see' that much of the action. If you get a brilliant closeup photo of Robbie Keane performing a bicycle kick, you won't see the net billow. And if you ever see a photographer behind a goal punching the air in delight as a goal is scored, you can be pretty sure he's missed the game's defining moment.

Where many bosses that turn up on No Experience Required take to preening and posturing, Inpho chief Billy Stickland ran the show with the relaxed self-confidence of someone whose company has already won more awards than you can shake a stick at and has nothing to prove.

He admitted one candidate to the final stages despite, or perhaps because of, his claim in an interview that if he could do anything in life he'd be Batman. "Like, if you won the euro millions, what would you do? I'd be Batman. Buy a big house. Get an English butler. Someone to make gadgets.

Build a cave. Go training in Tibet, whatever. It's possible." That's quite a calling.

Even after the initial 50 applicants had been whittled down, there were still difficulties. When the final two left standing were sent off to take pictures at Tolka Park under the pressures of a live situation, they were told that what they produced was not up to standard and couldn't be used. Thankfully, after that they both quickly found their feet in the live arena, James Crombie's talent and enthusiasm eventually earning him the six-month contract on offer.

As Stickland pointed out early on in the programme, people have a tendency to view sports photography as a glamorous life but, just as they've done with other occupations, No Experience Required punctured that bubble to a degree and managed to show exactly why it's such a difficult field to succeed in, an impressive truth to capture on film.

Click.