HALF of my week seems to be spent avoiding newspapers and the internet nowadays which, quite frankly, is a rather alarming confession for a journalist to make.

It's not that I'm despairing about the economy, or even that I'm scared about how swine flu is sweeping the globe.

No, it's something much more important: I’m trying to avoid finding out who's been fired on The Apprentice.

It's got quite ridiculous.

I swerved across the road in my haste to get to the volume button on my car radio the other day so I didn't have to hear them talking about the show.

Why don’t I just watch the show when it’s aired, you ask?

Well, being one of those people who need a good eight hours sleep (preferably nine) I just find myself too tired the next day if I stay up to watch the show.

I'm afraid at the grand old age of 29 I've caught the disease mums seem to have — needing to go to bed at 9.30pm if I'm able to function the next day.

Now I know I wrote a gushing article praising Sky Plus a few weeks ago, but I've got to admit I've found a fatal flaw — it's virtually impossible to record a reality TV show and watch it at your leisure without unintentionally finding out what happened first.

I find myself clasping a palm over friends’ mouths whenever they utter the words: “Did you watch the Apprentice last night?” and reading the BBC news website with one eye closed trying to avoid the “also in the news” column.

This week I was quite pleased with how I’d managed to avoid finding out who got booted out all day on Thursday.

I’d warned all my colleagues not to mention it in front of me, didn't visit a news website all day and even deleted a text from a friend because I knew she'd be talking about it . . . and all of my hard work was wasted when I saw Noorul's wimpy little face peeping out at me from a newsagent's window.

Damn!