So in order to reach your answer to the 'would you rather' question, you debate the merits associated with each option.

The game came to mind this week when I heard a radio discussion on reality television. Big Brother is back on Channel 4 for the summer and a Dutch station has come up with a reality show where a terminally ill woman is deciding which of three candidates with kidney disease should have her organs when she dies.

The discussion centred on the perception that watching reality shows is a lowest common denominator activity, pursued by the ignorant and created for the cerebrally challenged.

The same can be said for soaps. So my question to you is, 'Would you rather be publicly outed as someone who refuses to miss Coronation Street and Fair City or be forced to run down your road naked?'

The choices we make when it comes to watching television have become a social minefield. There have been many times over the past number of years when I witnessed someone in an office situation ask, "Did you see Coronation Street last night?" only to be met with mumbled replies and often silence. Professionals with brains don't watch soap operas.

Or so we'd like to think.

The numbers tell a different tale and hundreds of thousands of Irish people watch Eastenders, Coronation Street and Fair City every week. A maximum audience of eight million was achieved by Big Brother in the UK last year and yet, try to get someone in your office to say they saw it last night, and you will be met with the common mumbled response or the stony silence.

So why is it that 'soap opera' and 'reality television' have become dirty words? Why are we so scared to admit that we partake in such innocent pleasures? Last Sunday I caught myself watching Eastenders. Before I knew it, I was engrossed in some girl called Stacey's affair with a balding red-haired man whose wife was pregnant back home and none the wiser.

But to admit to such frivolous television watching behaviour is just not the done thing. We like to think that we are far too busy in this 'all work, no play' society to have time to lounge in front of the box watching the banalities of soap and reality television. It is akin to admitting a weakness to say that we take vegetative time out to indulge in escapism through television. However, there is another, perhaps more sinister factor at workf snobbery.

Watching documentaries and news programmes is socially acceptable, while admitting a predilection for the goings on in Fair City is not. Soaps are associated with a working-class dynamic that most upwardly mobile Irish people are trying to deny or escape from. To steal from David McWilliams, the Pope's Children don't do soaps, we do decking and big cars.

How silly we are, though, to deny ourselves the sinful pleasures of Big Brother. Of course all of the contestants are chosen because they are freaks in one way or another, but this is the fun of it. Watching people thrown together and trying to be accepted until they forget that the cameras are there and expose their frailties is fascinating fun.

For me, getting hooked on Big Brother this year would be too dangerous. It's too addictive to even dip one's toe into. That won't stop me stealing a look at the brilliant Wife Swap or my latest favourite, How to Look Good Naked.

So while you contemplate the dilemma of whether it is more shameful to admit a love affair with soaps or be forced to run around with no clothes on, you might want to remember that the Eastenders omnibus is on this afternoon. Go on, you know that you are far too busy and intelligent for Albert Square, but no one need ever know what you and your television get up to.