AS a nation, our capacity for independent thought is on the decline. If you need proof, take a look at the TV schedules.

Clearly it is challenging enough in the evening to slap your buttocks on to a sofa with a cup of tea and a couple of custard creams, feet up on the pouffe with remote poised.

Any extra effort is likely to make your average viewer's head explode all over the anaglypta. I think this must be the reason that TV programmes and their titles are becoming ever-more simplistic and spoon feeding.

Speaking of which, I blame Delia Smith. She kick-started the whole thing in 1998 when she rightly identified that, while there exists a demographic who like nothing more than to massage herbs into salmon, sautee exotic vegetables and mess around with fennel, there are others who have spent the past decade failing to correctly boil an egg.

Hence her book and TV series How To Cook, in which Delia soothingly nurtured a frightened and easily confused Joe Public through such terrors as how to bake a potato.

But since then, assuming the audience is an ignoramus has become a winning tactic.

Programmes with titles such as What Not To Wear, How To Be A Gardener, How Clean Is Your House?, You Are What You Eat and How Not To Decorate can all be found in this week's schedule, all of which sound like they've been written by Harry Enfield's Mr Don't Wanna Do It Like That.

I heard Bill Oddie on the radio last weekend lamenting the title of his new series How To Watch Wildlife. Still, it didn't matter whether the loveable twitcher liked it or not. The marketing team has established that what we want are more programmes whose raison d'etre is to tell us that whatever we're doing, we're doing it wrong with titles which convey the entire premise in seven words or less.

I can't remember what programme titles used to be like, but I'm sure they weren't as prosaic as this. A quick flick through this week's line-up brings up such gems as Not My Fault I'm Fat (which would be great if it were a searching look into the inner life of Anne Widdecombe, but disappointingly it's about a boy who is fat and it's not his fault.) Then there are Michael Jackson's Boys, Location Location Location, The Terror Suspect's Dad, We've Got the Builders In and The Truth about Kate Moss - any one of which would be rejected as the title of a child's short story for being too dull.

I wouldn't mind if they would apply the same process to making programmes that are actually helpful, like How To Change Your Spark Plugs, What Not To Do While Drunk on Malibu or The Truth About Epaulettes.

Ah well, I've no time to worry about that right now. I'm off to watch The Most Shocking Celebrity Moments of 2004. I can't wait to see what it's about.