TELL us what you do all day said the assistant editor to the lowly journalist fly. It’s for a Saturday column that goes behind the glamorous facade of The Herald to reveal the whirling cogs within.

If you say so. I suspect it is really a sneaky way of doing a time and motion study on my job, in which case it has been nice knowing you.

I, you see, watch television and get paid for it. I preview television, I review it, and I hold the industry that makes it up to the light the better to examine it closely.

If that sounds like one of the jammiest jobs in journalism, do not be fooled. There is a war for viewers going on out there in screen land, and it is my job to help steer the reader through it by pointing out the places to head for, and the areas to avoid.

The week starts with choosing what to preview and review in the coming seven days. In both cases I try to put myself in the position of The Herald reader. No sweat really because I am one.

Sometimes choosing is easy. Say I have to decide between a documentary on Watergate or some teen comedy full of morons doing idiotic things.

But then sometimes the teen comedies turn out to be treasures (This Country, Derry Girls, The Young Offenders, People Just Do Nothing), so they have to be watched, too, and recommended or not.

I try to review a broad range of shows to keep things lively and give readers plenty of choice. Hopefully there will be a meeting of minds on what is good or awful.

Now and then readers ask why we run television reviews on the homepage of the website beside news stories. The reason: because by dint of its popularity or significance the programme is an event. The final of Line of Duty, for example, or the first night of GB News, or a young Scottish student winning Mastermind. If people are talking about television they want to read about it too – and they do so in their thousands.

Sometimes it is more interesting when differences of opinion emerge. All you can do as a critic is give your honest opinion, argue it out, shove in a corny line here and there, and leave the reader to make up their own mind.

Occasionally there will be a show that has to be called out for the steaming pile of mince it is. Hello, the final series of Still Game. That was a tough one because it had a place in so many people’s affections, and rightly so.

But it had overstayed its welcome, lethal in a comedy, and simply wasn’t as funny as it had been. I said so and waited for the backlash to arrive. Except it did not. Readers felt the same; not all, but enough.

As a TV critic, you should never forget that it is the people who watch television, not those who make it, who pay your wages. So what if I never get invited to the swanky awards ceremonies and Christmas parties that used to be held. As long as I’m welcome in your TV room now and then that’s grand enough for me. Pass the remote, there's a dear.