As a young boy I was never allowed to touch it: they threatened me with paralysis and madness, blindness and a scarcity of intelligence.

And when I reached adolescence - with the privacy of my own room - the cry was still the same. ‘Stop playing with it!’ the voices would advise me.

If the floorboards outside on the landing were to creak, or the door handle was to shift from its position of rest, I would pull the covers over me and hope that whoever came in would not notice the bulge under the polyester sheets.

And now, I must admit, those feelings of guilt that engulf me every time I touch the thing have followed me through into adulthood and marriage.

Whenever my wife discovers me, a hand gripped around my old friend, a distant expression on my face, she tells me, ‘Harry, put down the TV remote!’