I know precisely the time of the evening when the Tsunami finally hit. I was sat on my sofa, brain-numbed as ever, too tired to go out, too tired to read, but not tired enough to go to sleep, a state of being I now appreciate as the norm for the majority of British men and women between the hours of 8:00 and 9:00pm on a Saturday night. I was surfing the channels, riding the wave you might say, when my thumb locked onto 'Ant & Dec's Gameshow Marathon'.

In front of an audience behaving as if they'd been injected with the antidote to the gas Chechen terrorists used to knock out a theatre of Muscovites, the nation's favourite cheeky chappies, the boys you would most like to take home to mother and whom most mothers it seems would like to take home, were boisterously holding court, ploughing through a slew of ham-fisted jokes, googled-eyed entendres and half-baked ribbing. And as I watched this unimaginative slice of Modern entertainment unfold, I began to wonder how we had got here and whether anyone even cared.

Before I get into my stride, I must make clear, this isn't going to be one of those grumpy old rants; 'Life was better back then' - it probably wasn't - but I am struck by the notion that if Life, if Entertainment wasn't better back then, then why on earth haven't we learnt from it and done our damnedest to make it better. Certainly not worse, at any rate.

What confuses me further, is that as the level of mainstream entertainment has descended into this miasma of un-special retreads that weren't all that special the first time around, the level of hysterical praise heaped upon our current-day performers seems to have increased exponentially with awards being flung at them as muck once was at petty thieves.

Admittedly, compared to the 50's, 60's & 70's, the size of the entertainment industry is now vast. With the multitude of channels and formats in existence there are acres, if not continents to fill. It is inevitable that the palette will therefore be spread a little more thinly; there simply isn’t the talent to go round.

Yet rather than accept this as fact, shrug shoulders and wait until something decent comes along, the powers-that-be, expensively employed to fill schedules, charts and rack-space, continue to pump out volumes of product that would suffocate even the most discerning consumer. Much like the supermarket shelves stocked with a hundred different types of breakfast cereal, the choice proving so bamboozling, the shopper inevitably plumps for old standards, so is the world of modern entertainment.

At best, Television offers us a slew of cops, doctors and soaps, sometimes combined in a sort of 'Co-Do-So' smorgasbord… while at worst we are invited to trawl through the vaults of TV and Pop history in order to watch reams of 'Lists' - best this, worst that, the coolest, the hottest, the all round gnarliest - accompanied by a ceaseless array of D-list commentators and wannabes pontificating, much like I am now.

The nadir of this cultural self-abuse is taking place in the music charts now dominated by saccharine covers or half-baked Rn'B hybrids basing their entire appeal on a sample of a 'classic' instantly memorable to the listener and which mistakenly imparts an aura of pop authenticity to the song in question - see Madonna's new single 'Hung-Up' as a prime example.

But television is now leaping on the same bandwagon, cannibalising itself in a desperate attempt to fill the air-waves. From D.I.Y. to Food, the multitude of programmes wringing the last breath from a format have left in their wake a kind of scorched earth policy on Life itself. There is nothing more we need to know about water-features, caramelising crème caramels or MDF. We have watched people leave the city, leave the country, fly, drive, take the tube, emigrate, set up home, swap lives, swap wives, swap bodies, swap entire generations… damn it, if only there were more folks able to afford to go into Space we could probably swap universes as well.

With Hollywood movies offering no more than a sterile panorama of geek-fantasy driven increasingly faster and more furiously by pot-bellied, pizza-scarfing number-crunchers whose world revolves around the words 'point and click'… while the mainstream book market remains dominated by television spin-offs, ghost-written biographies and half-baked conspiracy theories, one wonders what, if anything, is feeding the minds of the masses.

And the answer is of course, they aren’t there to be fed. The food exists but given the choice, because of a lack of time, the pressure of work, raising a family - choose your excuse - the average citizen will always opt for the processed, easy-cook ready-meal.

Which brings me back to 'Ant & Dec'. If we continue the food analogy further, when restaurant reviewers come to present their annual awards, do they hand them to the Barbecue Broilers from BK, the Mexican wraps from The Colonel, the M&S prawn-avo sarnies? Of course not. So why is it that when we come to praise the cream of British Entertainment in something as daft and as over-blown as the National Television Awards, we somehow, as consumers, always opt for the same inedible tosh? And if it's all merely a cheap bit of fun which means nothing in the long run, why is it that so much energy, money and manpower is being spent to uphold, foster and promote it?

I'm not suggesting do away with it in some puritanical purge - well I am actually - how wonderful that would be - "Learn the piano! Sit around the hearth singing songs to each other you miserable dolts!" - at least that way contestants for 'The X-Factor' might actually be able to carry a tune - but I am suggesting a 'gentle' program of social re-engineering.

If people want their 'Heat' magazine, their Robbie, their Paris, their 'Millionaire'… by all means let them have it. But let's at least begin a campaign of mild discrimination, much like Burberry suffered when the White Underclass, or to call them by their politically acceptable name, 'Chavs', took up beige plaid as a uniform.

To that end, may I suggest the repeated mimicking of sheep the moment anyone attempts to bring low-end aperçus into daily conversation. A repeated chorus of 'Baaas' would surely be enough to persuade the dullards of this world that their choice of cultural matter was long due for revision.

In days gone by when journals such as 'The Modern Review' attempted to prick the pompous bubble of High Art it was sorely needed. The pendulum has now swung too far the other way.

In the end of course it's a matter of choice. Sure you can like this fluff, you can gorge yourselves on it, The Red-Tops, Big Brother… Wayne & Colleen… but know this; to love it, to think it interesting, that it is worth in-depth discussion over the morning water cooler, marks you out as a moron, a dim-wit, a tasteless and tedious lump, un-sexy, unattractive, a bit of an embarrassment to be honest.

If you’re happy with that, as happy and as inured to the insults and withering scorn as are Cliff Richard fans, then go ahead… love it. But don’t come complaining if you subsequently suffer the consequences of rigorous and relentless character assassination. You bloody deserved it.