I like to pretend I'm clever, so I sneer at trashy, popular things. I'll nod gravely at columns saying The X Factor is ruining music, but I'll still watch it. I treasure the Victorian classics yet I still want to be buried with a copy of The Shining.

So although I might act clever, and pretend I don't know who Pharrell is, the truth is that I do. I'm as grubby with daft pop culture as everyone else, I just like to hold a copy of Middlemarch in my lap every now and then, feeling the impressive heft of it, before putting aside, when no-one is looking, and reaching for '100 Greatest Time Travel Stories'.

But there was no point acting clever and aloof about Mrs Brown's Boys. George Eliot couldn't shield me from that. I have to watch TV for a living, and so I was forced to take it in. I couldn't sniff and shrug and go back to Middlemarch (telling myself 'they say it gets good after a hundred pages'). I was forced to become acquainted with Mrs Brown, that vile man dressed up in bulky cardigans and flowery blouses, charging across the set and girning at the camera.

I was forced to watch it, but never to review it. Other TV critics bravely tackled it, but I turned my face away. It was like seeing the nurses going off to Sierra Leone: I could relax because there is always someone else to do the harsh, unpleasant work.

But this Christmas I chose to review it, perhaps out of a perverse, Scrooge-like desire to dismantle my festive cheer. I looked ahead to the Christmas calendar and predicted I'd be feeling bloated with cheery, tinselly TV by now, so what better way to start the new year with the awesome palate cleanser of Mrs Brown's Boys?

When I sat down to watch it I worried that some kind of innocence and beauty would be stripped from my mind by its gaudy pollution. I must remind myself of good things, I thought, so I sat with five copies of Middlemarch, placing them around me like crucifixes and garlic placed around the bed in a vampire film. This won't affect you, I told myself. It's just a silly TV comedy. It has nothing to do with life or death.

Instead, it had something to do with burglars. Mrs Brown got an alarm fitted and it kept going off. The alarm kept going off, you see? It kept going off and making a loud noise. That was it. That was the thing which was provoking the audience's deranged laughter. Do you get it? Mrs Brown taps her wee number into the keypad, then rushes to the front door, but the alarm keeps going off before she can vacate the room. Do you see? Do you get it?

No, neither did I. There were some other things in the wispy plot. Her daughter was going to London to visit a sperm bank. Apparently that was funny because it concerned sexual organs. Then some burglars broke in and stole Mrs Brown's chair, so she got a new chair. Then she played poker. Then it ended. Then I took a big blue bottle of Domestos into the bathroom and scrubbed myself clean, but my skin only. Not my mind. How do I get my mind clean of this?

I simply can't understand why this is so popular. Watching it I felt either uncomfortable, puzzled or just plain bored.

But I also felt hate! This is the season of goodwill yet I felt ugly, snaky contempt for every single person who watches this and insists on guffawing and spluttering and howling, and so ensures that this monstrous thing is plastered on BBC1, mopping up all the time, money and attention.

Who are the millions who watch this? I want to force them into freezing showers and then give them an espresso to shake them out of their stupor. I want to hand them TV listings telling them when they might find some repeats of Toast of London, or Father Ted or Bottom or even the bloody Beechgrove Garden! Anything - anything - is funnier than this. Anything.

But maybe they don't need TV listings and cold water. Maybe I'm the one who's wrong? Maybe Mrs Brown's Boys is good and funny. How can I tell? Me, with my unread Middlemarch on the shelf, who's to say I am the arbiter of taste and art? I once bought Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex, and damn well enjoyed it. I used to dine nightly on something called Tikka Pockets from Farmfoods. I used to fancy Jeremy Paxman. What do I know about taste?

PS can anyone tell me what happens at the end of Middlemarch?