I'D like to thank Jeremy Paxman for coming right out and saying it: sometimes it's okay to watch trash TV.

The description isn't mine, by the way - it belongs to the Radio Times writer who interviewed him.

The interview was published yesterday and Paxman caused a stir by admitting that, yes, he had watched The Only Way is Essex. He then volunteered that he hadn't liked it as much as Take Me Out, "which I think is a fantastic show."

His interviewer, understandably nonplussed, said he thought Paxman had just said that he liked the downmarket show. "I do!" Paxman replied, slightly too heartily. He went on to say that he had watched Made in Chelsea ("Just because I don't like the people in it ... it's probably a reflection on me, not them") and had also tuned into The Voice UK.

Thanks, Jeremy. If Take Me Out is acceptable fare on Saturday night in the Paxman household, then it's okay with me.

It's a funny thing, popular TV. I've watched Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor from time to time, simultaneously thinking 'That singer's got a great voice' and feeling a niggling sense of guilt that I'm not watching something more ... well, more improving. A minority-interest arts programme on BBC3 or BBC4, say. That's the Herald reader in me.

I've wasted entire nights speed-flicking through the wilder shores of satellite TV, making brief stopovers at Fox News and the religious channels and the parliamentary-debate channel and the programmes devoted to US extreme sports, on the grounds that 600-plus channels will surely offer something diverting, only to end up slack-jawed with fatigue and boredom and waking up at 3am to find I've fallen asleep while watching a show on the Jewellery Channel on which some presenter has been trying in vain to sell me some nice item in Indicolite Quartz.

Jeremy said something else yesterday that was interesting: namely, that he no longer watches his old show, Newsnight. "My idea of fun," he conceded, "is to go to bed at 10.30pm and read a book."

Thank goodness someone has said it. I mean, I like Newsnight, and admire Evan, Kirsty and the other presenters, and recognise the show's value during an election campaign. But ... it doesn't start until 11pm up here, after Scotland 2015. And at that time of night, and at my age, and faced with an early start in the morning? It's as much as I can do to pick up the remote and click the off button.