Books vs the box

WE'RE a lazy bunch. What happens every night when we come home from work? On goes the telly, off goes the brain. Bubble gum for the eyes, I tell you.

Not so across the Channel. All those French intellectuals have their Gallic noses stuck in a book. Something about philosophy no doubt (it is the 100th anniversary of Jean-Paul Sartre's birth on Monday after all).

And down there in India there's no prising them out from between the covers. The world's biggest readers, the Indians.

While they're turning the pages, we're flipping between Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island. Our favourite literary work is the TV section of Heat magazine.

Okay, so I exaggerate. But the figures don't look good. Britons spend more time in front of the television and less time reading than most other Europeans.

The average person in Britain (him again; he's always doing these surveys) watches 18 hours of TV a week, more than his average counterpart in France, Spain, Germany and Italy.

By contrast, Britons spend just 5.3 hours a week reading, says the international poll by NOP world. That's more than an hour an half less than an average French person. And way behind the Indian reader who clocks up 10.7 hours a week.

You have to admit, it doesn't look good.

"From a UK perspective it is perhaps not surprising that we rank so high in terms of television," said NOP World spokesman Nick Chiarelli.

"Watching TV has always been a popular leisure pastime in this country - but it is quite concerning how far we lag behind many other countries in terms of how much we read."

But is it so bad?

Is reading automatically a superior activity than watching telly?

Or can TV take you to places that books can't?

We asked two York people to put the case for books and for the box.

I love books says Tim Curtis

MY passion for books developed fairly late. School was so tiring, when you got home you threw your bag off and watched television - that's all you wanted to do.

Although I was quite an unwilling young reader, I would blitz things I really liked: all the Lord Of The Rings books, for instance.

At university we didn't have TVs at all. So I started reading for pleasure. In the early Nineties I read Lawrence Block and James Ellroy, hard-boiled crime stories, quite violent in places. From there I began reading magical realism novels, like those of Louis De Bernieres and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Reading invigorates your mind. Books make you think about universal themes and question the motivation of the characters.

Fictional characters from a good book live so much more completely in your imagination than those from a television series.

A TV adaptation takes out about 70 per cent of the average book. And there are a lot of very bad films made from very good books.

I loved The House Of The Spirits by Isabel Allende, but it was turned into a woeful movie with Jeremy Irons and Winona Ryder. American Carl Hiaasen's blackly comic novels are another favourite. He wrote Strip Tease - a really funny book, which became a dreadful film starring Demi Moore. It was so bad it put people off Hiaasen for a while.

I avoided Captain Corelli's Mandolin because I heard all the accents were terrible. This is a complex book about history and relationships and they reduced it to a simple love story, taking all the heart out of it.

People don't feel challenged by fiction on TV. I have read Salman Rushdie's literary stories. There isn't a television equivalent of that at all.

Reading does push you and make you think about things you might not otherwise consider. Books show you new worlds and make connections with your own experiences.

There are a lot of good things out there for children to read. Anthony Horowitz writes teenage spy books, the Alex Rider series, the latest being Ark Angel. Many kids who think they don't like books would love them.

For adults, there's something for everyone to enjoy. People who aren't heavy readers might like Nick Hornby, whose books read like a good magazine article in parts. You don't have to read the complete works of Tolstoy.

And books are so portable. You can take them to a special place. My favourite places for reading are my sofa and my bed - although I like to read next to the Minster on a nice day. It's nice to have something to do on your own sometimes.

Nothing is better for travel than a good book. When I was in London and commuting two hours a day, I read a lot of novels.

If you meet someone who has read and enjoyed the same novels as you, there's an instant bond. Books take a long time to read. It's a real journey and it's interesting to meet someone who has made that same journey.

TV tells you what to look at and what to think. With books you make your own images, and they're often better.

Tim co-owns the Little Apple Bookshop on High Petergate, York

I love TV says Eddie Vee

I HAVE always been a fan of TV. From the moment I watched my grandma's Decca television set, with its little screen in the middle of what looked like a chest of drawers, I was fixated.

Not many seven-year-olds watched Coronation Street, but I did. I've been a fan since the days of Ray Langton, Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell. I even wrote a Street script, aged nine, and sent it in. It included a line for Betty Turpin, talking about Annie Walker: "For two pins I'd knock her block off."

Television opened up new worlds. I remember when they revealed the treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb in about 1971. I was 12. That programme started an interest in Egyptology which I continued through books. We didn't live in London and the exhibition never came to York, so that would never have happened without TV.

As I grew up my tastes developed. I became interested in current affairs. My godmother told me: "the news is very important". On school day lunchtimes I would sit with her watching First Report with Robert Key.

Today I watch about 54 hours a week. I still watch Coronation Street - my tastes haven't changed that much - and I like well written TV dramas. Some of the Plays for Today were really compelling, like Brimstone And Treacle and Scum, about a borstal for boys.

TV definitely has the power to change things. Spitting Image changed the way we perceived politicians - no one can look at John Major now without thinking of him as the grey man who liked peas.

Live Aid came from a TV report about the famine in Africa. George Harrison had done a concert for Bangladesh many years before, but it was Bob Geldof who fully harnessed the global power of television to raise money and awareness.

As for quiz shows, I don't only watch them, I've been in most of them. My general knowledge has absolutely rocketed because of TV quizzes. They have increased my thirst for knowledge and yet they're criticised for "dumbing down".

My two daughters, 11 and 13, both watch TV a lot. I don't censor what they watch. I like them to keep an open mind. They are both very intelligent girls, at the top of the class.

One day they will be watching the CBBC show Tracy Beaker, about a orphaned girl, the next they will be saying how good Bad Girls is. And they like Big Brother of course.

The thing about reality TV is you get to experience things through other people's eyes. We watched Holiday Showdown this week. It was very good and showed how two families couldn't interact with each other.

We discuss a lot of things we watch together. We ask them, what would you have done if that were you?

Both my daughters are big readers, and I have a library of 1,500 books almost all of which I've read. It's nice to have your own imagination, but it's also nice to see somebody else's.

TV can take you anywhere.

Eddie Vee is an Elvis tribute act who has appeared on many telly quiz shows and reality TV programmes.

Updated: 10:40 Friday, June 17, 2005