Being a) male and b) a Northerner, I don't often succumb to illness, but when I do it's never pretty. And last Tuesday, just as I was perusing the printed version of last week's column, I began to get rather unpleasant twinges in the stomach department (and the first person to write in and say they get a sick feeling in their gut every time they read this column knows exactly what they can do).

The last time I remember being this ill was in January, 2005, and the reason I remember it so well was that West Yorkshire was being battered by storms and I had to drag myself off my sickbed to go and batten down the garden fence that was threatening to take flight in the direction of next door's conservatory.

Thankfully, no such drama occurred last week.

It was purely a case of lying in bed, drinking water and moaning a lot.

Like half of the district, I had been attacked by some evil gastro-entiritis bug and, boy, did it make its presence felt.

Of course, being a man means you never get any sympathy for falling ill. Yes, you might be writhing around in agony, clutching your stomach and manfully trying to keep in your wails of pain, but what possible retort is there to: "Stomach ache? Try having contractions, pal"?

Answer: none. So best to suffer in silence.

Women always make a big thing of men claiming to suffer much more during illness, even to the point of coining the term "man 'flu" to describe how men are so obviously milking every ounce of sympathy from their situations.

So there was nothing for it but to wrap myself in the duvet and stick on the portable telly.

Which, it has to be said, was a revelation in itself. Not the telly, although it is very nice (a Bush, if they want to send me a more updated one for the next time I'm poorly. A flat screen model with a built in DVD recorder and Freeview box would be nice) but the actual programming.

When I was off sick as a youngster, daytime telly consisted of Pebble Mill at One, a few impenetrable cartoons such as Issy Noho (a magic panda. Great) and lots of worthy "programmes for schools" in which youngsters living in blocks of flats would get bullied, steal Marathons from the corner shop and be cuffed around the ears by a shopkeeper in an unconvincing moustache, followed by exhortations for young people to think about their behaviour.

Now you can literally spend a whole day glued to the box, starting with GMTV, then This Morning with Phil and Fern, then a good punchup with Jeremy Kyle and his assorted low-lifes arguing over who's got the biggest drug habit.

Over lunchtime you get the wonderfully sublime Loose Women, which involves a load of gobby females including Colleen Nolan swilling mugs of "tea" (although whatever they are actually drinking loosens the tongue a lot more than Tetley's ever did in my experience) and cackling about sex and shopping.

Then, after dragging yourself to the kitchen to make a boiled egg and some toast soldiers, you can settle down to a good Hob Nob special in the form of a melodramatic old black and white movie in the afternoon.

There's usually just time for a sleep to get you looking all bleary eyed and fussed up before everyone else comes home and you can tell them what a rotten time you've had, and how just one more day off might make you feel a lot better.

In fact, the only thing that actually spoils the whole day is the not-feeling-very-well aspect of being off sick, which, I suppose is one of life's great ironies.