Somewhere north of here, nice young people with names like Tom and Christabel sit in offices and put together little courier bags full of DVDs and other goodies to send to me.
It is a tradition I encourage at every opportunity.
Once, I got a small kitchen appliance that makes whirring sounds and cuts up vegetables.
This week, I got something altogether different.
It came in a little blue package, and it appeared to be made up of diamantes, in the shape, perhaps, of a butterfly, or a bird. T
he instructions discussed "waxing", so I thought perhaps it had something to do with vehicle detailing.
They also mentioned "shaving", so I wondered if perhaps it was to do with male toiletries.
I turned the package over in my hand, and found, to my rising horror, a product called a "vajazzle".
It included an alcohol swab.
It had instructions that mentioned - I can barely write this - the "pubic area".
Quelle horreur! It was something to do with ladies' bits.
So is The Only Way is Essex , which Tom or Christabel claim is "one of Britain's most talked-about TV series, which follows the lives of the glamorous young people of Britain's fake tan capital".
The Only Way is Essex begins February 8, 7.30pm on UKTV, and won the YouTube Audience Award at the 2011 BAFTAs.
That would generally suggest it was awful. I watched it, and found it was much, much worse.
It was a loggerheaded, pox-marked, rump-fed, tardy-gaited puttock of a show, and, let me tell you, I would much prefer to spend my evenings forcing burning bamboo sticks under my fingernails than waste one second on such ill-nurtured tripe.
The show begins with the boast it "contains flash cars, big watches and false boobs".
It was not, however, brave enough to admit it was an appallingly cheap rip-off of Jersey Shore, the American reality series that mocked Italian-American stereotypes.
There are accents.
"Allo babe, ow ya doin', orright?" someone irrelevant says to someone immaterial.
That's about all that happens, apart from a horrendous shot of the lower abdomen region of some blank-brained little strumpet wearing nothing but ladies' underpants and a pair of modestly crossed arms.
She has a tattoo of "Mark" thereabouts.
"Oh honey, that's sooooo nice," her friend and beauty therapist cackles.
"No-one else will hopefully see that," she inexplicably adds.
The therapist is also going to add to the decoration of the aforesaid area by applying the vajazzle.
"I went on a course about, literally, two years ago," she boasts.
That occurrence may grace the next show, but I won't be watching.
Stay well, well away.
