Maybe a lifetime of watching lightweight telly is finally catching up with me, or maybe it’s because I’m not the sharpest nail in the toolbox, but these days I struggle to follow anything more complicated than a washing powder advert.

Ever since I became addicted to Dynasty, aged about 13, I have indulged in the guilty pleasure of trashy TV.

There are soap operas – at one time I was following four British soaps, as well as a couple of American and Australian ones – irresistibly tacky TV dramas, from Howard’s Way to Bad Girls, and, of course, reality TV shows. I’m not proud of it, but I’ve watched everything from Celebrity Love Island to Katie and Peter: Stateside.

I do try and watch quality stuff too, but when I’ve been at work all day, chewing-gum-for-the-eyes helps me wind down.

Problem is, I think it has sent my brain soft. Whenever I come across anything requiring some concentration, or a sprinkling of intelligence, I can’t seem to follow the plot without getting a headache.

I recently sat through BBC2 drama The Shadow Line and by the end of the final episode I had no idea what it was about. It all looked very classy and well-acted, but I didn’t understand it.

I once tried to follow a TV adaptation of Dickens’ Little Dorrit, but didn’t have a clue what was going on, or who half the characters were. It was nice to look at, though, and sometimes that’s enough.

I sat through the entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed the big-screen spectacle, despite having a fragile grasp of the plot. Something to do with some little men and a ring?

The same goes for Pirates Of The Caribbean. Who cares what it’s about when you’ve got Johnny Depp in leather pants and guy-liner?

Not so entertaining was Transformers. I’ll be giving Optimus Prime and co a miss this time around, after taking my nephews to see the last Transformers movie and discovering, to my horror, that it was two hours, 45 minutes long.

Sam, who loved it, soon gave up trying to explain to me what was going on. His younger brother was restless after an hour, whimpering and wriggling. It became a hellish endurance test.

If I can’t even follow a daft film about fighting robots, maybe I should accept my limits.

Life’s too short for complicated cop dramas, or tedious science-fiction thrillers, when I could be watching Dating In The Dark. I draw the line at anything involving Kerry Katona or the Kardashians, though. A girl’s gotta have standards.