I WAS enjoying a re-run of the Labyrinth on Channel 5 at the weekend when the television began to intermittently buzz.

It started in the ad break even before David Bowie, resplendent in jodhpurs and crimped hair, had appeared on the screen ready to take baby Toby on a jaunt to the Goblin City.

The buzzing was a five second snippet of irritating theme music heralding an annual televisual phenomenon and not, as first suspected, a glitch on the screen.

No, it means Big Brother will soon descend upon the channel and stay there for the entire summer.

It filled me with a mixture of dread and disappointment. I both like and dislike it in equal measure.

Every year, since pretty much the second series aired on its previous home of Channel 4, I have been adamant I won't watch it again.

But even when it moved home and everyone said it would never recover, I still dipped in and out.

No longer a social experiment to find out how people would behave when surreptitiously watched - it is fairly certain they all know they are being filmed hence the desperation to be on there - it is more a circus of the grotesque in recent times.

The producers try their utmost to choose combative contestants who are likely to disagree with each other, and if they don't they create situations which will pit the closest of pals against each other.

And if that fails, they chuck some alcohol in to the middle of it all and stand well back.

And not only do we have the main show on, often for an hour at a time, and the eviction shows, there are also a myriad spin-offs so that essentially Channel 5 becomes Big Brother and little else.

Which is probably not much of a blow unless you will be sad not to be seeing endless documentaries about slum landlords, rent dodgers and bailiffs.

And film gems like Labyrinth, and Willow which also got a rare airing this weekend as part of an 80s bonanza.

There must be a real appetite still for Big Brother but to me it just seems tired now.

I don't really want my ten-year-old watching it - even if it is the repeated version which they tend to clean up for day-time use.

It is another example of people attempting to launch media careers by being slightly unpleasant.

So maybe this will be the year I keep my promise to myself and avoid it at all costs.