Dan Morris: Palindromes and sleep - never odd or even

I found myself pondering this foible of the English language in one of my frequent spells awake at this time.

In general, I'm not a good sleeper - tossing, turning and often tormented by particular thoughts I allow to grip hold.

Sometimes these are lexicological annoyances, sometimes more serious and personal. Whatever the case however, my method for exorcising them has been the same for a long, long time.

Like many others across our green and pleasant land, I am a telly sleeper. A score of previous partners (the significance, I suppose, being in the word 'previous') will attest to the fact that one of my most unbearable quirks is my want to have the bedroom television on all night long.

Plainly and simply, this is because I find the stars of The Big Bang Theory, Scrubs, and even the not-so-dulcet tones of Janice from Friends to be more soothing à la sleep than the voices in my own head. Yet, for bedfellows who don't have the same problem, I appreciate that having the idiot box squawking all night can be something of a nightmare.

I'm not a monster, and have always reduced the volume to a very low purr. And, for those entirely unable to cope with even the slightest background noise to get a full night's sleep, I have thrown myself on my sword, put their needs first, and bid farewell to Sheldon and the boys. The trouble is, the TV goes off, and my frantic grey matter comes back on. What then follows is the aforementioned insomniac fidgeter coming to stay, who I am told is far more of a hindrance to a good kip than a Netflix box set allowed to run free.

I've been aware that I am far from alone in needing the telly to get me to nod off for a long time, yet a particularly sobering statistic that I recently uncovered stated that a jaw-dropping 61 per cent of Americans fall asleep to the TV on a nightly basis. Over nearly a century, television has become a massive part of the waking lives of the human race - I just hadn't realised it had become such a big part of our sleeping ones.

I've avoided reading any material about the supposed negative health effects of telly sleeping, but I have to admit, this bothered me a bit. Having seen far too many films in my life (don't say it), I couldn't shake the feeling that we are all slowly being plugged into the Matrix. TV, for conscious entertainment and relaxation, is fine - I've written about this before. But television being freely given the vault keys to the subconscious of so, so many people? This just felt a little disconcerting, and I no longer wanted to be one of them.

So, for the last couple of weeks I have been weaning myself off, and am now in full-blown cold turkey mode. I started by employing the use of my telly's sleep timer - a fantastic function I had shamefully been unaware of that allows you to program the box to turn itself off after a chosen amount of time (yes, as it has been pointed out to me recently, I really do need to leave the house more).

This worked well for a fortnight, and now I have entirely abandoned the sweet background fodder of my favourite sitcoms upon closing my eyes, and have resorted to the age-old technique of counting sheep.

Happily, this is now grand for a decent stretch - an average of around four hours. But then, the cogs turn and the engine whirs once more. 'Why is 'abbreviate' such a long word?' got me kick-started in the early hours the other morning. And the night before that I was consumed with the classic conundrum of whether or not a falling tree makes a sound if there is no one there to hear it. This one was actually quite quickly resolved - of course it does, with sound being a physical effect not predicated upon a recipient.

But then, yes, last night it was the ghastly palindrome debacle, and the illogical nature of that one will, I suspect, always continue to 'evade me... Dave'.

Maybe it is indeed time for some real shut-eye. For the love of God, pass me the remote...