YOU probably imagine that I wear a floor length evening gown and pearls, looking not dissimilar to a post war BBC announcer, while I write this column. Perhaps you see me sitting serenely at an antique mahogany desk, a priceless Mont Blanc fountain pen in one hand and an elegant ivory cigarette holder in the other, writing words of whimsy for your delectation and deliberation.

Unfortunately, this couldn't be much further from the truth if you put it in a rocket and shot it into space. As I frantically bash out my columns - usually at the last minute and without a coherent thought in my head - I balance my laptop on a piece of laminated chipboard held up precariously by a bit of metal tubing rammed snugly between the said makeshift desk and the scruffy, flood-damaged carpet.

My pen is not a Mont Blanc but a trusty Bic - slightly chewed - and a cigarette holder would be wasted on me as I gave up smoking about six years ago (give or take the odd puff of a cancer stick whenever Nic and Tine, my sisters-in-law, turn up to tempt me back into my evil ways).

It probably won't surprise you to learn that I don't own a floor length evening gown and pearls either. In fact I own precisely one dress, a slinky black Chinese number that the BBC would have banned for lowering the tone, and no jewellery to speak of, unless a wooden star on a string is counted as jewellery these days.

My attire when writing is more commonly a baggy old shirt with a patch of dried baby dribble on the shoulder and jeans that are so old they remember when Status Quo were a promising boy band. And that is on a good day. On a bad day it is not unheard of for me to try to put pen to paper (or finger to laptop) while wearing a decrepit dressing gown and flip flops.

But what does it matter? I could be working in the nude and you wouldn't be any the wiser, although my window cleaner, who is peering in at me as I write this, might need counselling or, at the very least, an extra sugar in his tea. You could also be reading this completely starkers and I wouldn't have a clue.

And, quite frankly, I like it that way. I like being able to communicate without having to be on display. This is why I love email, which allows you to say precisely what you think from the safety of your own computer without having to see, speak or listen to another person. And it is why I hate the idea of video phones.

The UK's newest phone operator - the succinctly named 3 - is hoping to convert one million of Britain's 46 million mobile users into "third generation" video phone users by the end of the year. But this is just the first rung on a very long, hi-tech ladder as the company coughed up a whopping £4.4 billion for the licence and will have to revolutionise the market if it is to get the merest whiff of a profit.

Industry experts are already expressing pessimistic profit predictions and it's true to say that when the handsets went on sale in 2,000 shops across the country last week, no one was killed in the rush. It seems that while we might quite like to be able to download football highlights, film clips and news bulletins on to our mobiles, we don't really want to be downloadable ourselves.

We don't want the person on the other end of the line to be able to see us in all our glory, complete with stained sweatshirt and Billy Whizz hair, while they pour their heart out. And we certainly don't want them to see us clipping our toe nails, eating spaghetti with our hands or scratching unmentionable parts of our anatomy as we converse about the latest world crisis.

You see, sometimes it really is better to be heard and not seen. Especially if you are wearing a dangerously unflattering dressing gown and flip flops.

Updated: 09:32 Tuesday, June 17, 2003