I like to watch those TV programmes about hoarders. Not so I can gasp in astonishment as people build themselves nests of old newspapers or sit in a 2 sq ft space surrounded by glassy-eyed Victorian dolls, but so I can spot any bits of swag that I’d like to add to my own growing hoard.

Whatever the genetic programming that causes these people to fill their lives with junk, I think I have a bit of it, at least in certain areas. And that is chiefly printed matter; books, magazines or comics.

I can’t bear to throw any of them away. When Mrs B first met me and came to visit me at my house, I had a spare room that contained a massive pile of paperback books – really, it dominated the whole room, a gigantic scale-model of one of those Aztec pyramids you find in the jungle, almost reaching the ceiling. At that time I was also watching a portable TV that was balanced on a crooked folding chair, and eating my meals with a cheese-knife, but that’s probably a story for another day.

The fact that the soon-to-be-Mrs-B didn’t run screaming, never to return, is a testament to... well, something, at any rate. Perhaps the fact that I was brandishing a cheese-knife meant she didn’t want to make any sudden moves.

The books, an ever-growing mass of them, have moved with me wherever I’ve left. I can’t bear to part with them, on account of the fact that one day I might want to look something up that’s only contained in that book, or read it again from cover to cover. Last year Mrs B “persuaded” me to take some of them to a charity shop.

I ended up carting off about 300 – a drop in the ocean as far as the collection is concerned. But it was a wrench, and I almost had sleepless nights (though not as bad as the ones when I wake up sweating remembering the comic books I sold on eBay a few years ago to make some quick bucks.) The bulk of the book collection is up in the attic, and sometimes I climb up there and sit among them, stroking their covers in the darkness like a weird serial killer who lurks about in the loft. I know this is not normal behaviour, but I don’t care.

A few years ago, when my parents were evidently finally convinced that I’d left home for good (I think I’d just turned 40) they gleefully turned up with a car-full of boxes of comics, magazines and odds and ends, saying they “needed the space”. Mrs B’s face fell even as my eyes lit up at the sight of those long-forgotten gems.

Watching one of those hoarder programmes recently, I found myself tutting at one scene – not because it was a mess, but because he had a pile of Star Wars comics, all out of order and higgledy-piggledy. Some people.

In fact, that reminds me of something in a book I’ve got... I’m just bobbing up to the attic. See you next week.