Any recent obsessions I might have had for the Channel 4 Big Brother productions have been easily cured. I thought I would get hooked all over again with 3 as I did with the original and 2. I thought I would again feel that inexplicable compulsion to tune in regularly and watch a clutch of shallow half-witted fame-wishers inanely chattering their way to undeserved though mercifully transient fame.

All the requisites are in place: unfunny tomfoolery, sexually frustrated attractions, total ignorance among the chosen players of anything outside the limited scope of their own existence as they mug, bug, and hug their way through their torture. Our, or at least my torture.

I don't want to watch it this time. Is it their fault? I doubt that - they're ideal for the format. Together this "cast," this "troupe,"this carefully chosen dramatis personae are all the previous participants writ large. As loud, daft, and smutty as any who have gone before them. Perhaps I've finally grown up, I don't know. Time - any amount of time spent in the "company" of this lot bores me. I don't even feel that sting of vicarious embarrassment I used to feel when watching.

Those faithfully reproduced examples of conversation posted elsewhere are no better or worse than what's been heard previously. Funny, I suppose, but no longer surprising. All the head shaking incredulity that could be done, has been done. I have incredulity fatigue.

Perhaps there are no more surprises to be had from this kind of experiment. A bit of swearing and mucky talk here, a little cabin-fevered antagonism there. A few monologues of outrageous factual inaccuracy here, a little cod-psychology there. Throw in some half hearted nakedness, crap jokes and a bit of clumsy rumpy pumpy and that's about it.

What I can't deny however is that the contents of my stats have been enlivened by the existence of BB3 and through my weird need to write about it even when I refuse to watch it. Just about everyone who visits this site through a search engine want's to see Kate either naked or in a thong. Jade's recently exposed oral skills - the kind where the utterance of fully formed words isn't a requirement, seems to have someone in a panting tizzy.

And as if to demonstrate the wonders of diversity, somebody out there got all excited about the idea of the now absent giantess Alison in a thong. Which might be stretching a point rather, not to mention what she might have done to the minimalist properties of that style of underwear.

I might stray from this self imposed denial and return to BB3. It depends on how I manage without it.