Very interesting - but what’s that on your shelf?

Readers of celebrity lifestyle magazines like HELLO!, OK! or anything else with a gratuitous exclamation mark and needless upper case letters, must be loving the glimpse we’re getting into celebrities’ homes during lockdown.

And it’s not only celebrities filling a professional void from an unflattering angle with poor frame composition while public performance spaces are out of bounds.

Medical experts, virologists and assorted academics, with previously negligible media profiles, have joined the ranks of those affording us a look at their curtains, mantelpieces, tasteful artwork and anything else they manage to thrust into the background while they’re filming themselves for news bulletins or TV interviews.

Interviewees have been carefully curating bookshelves to make themselves come across as well-read, intellectual and, frankly, as if they need to have a good clear out. These fascinating backdrops become a major distraction and we all end up trying to work out if that’s a copy of Alex Ferguson’s autobiography behind them, rather than listening to what they’re actually saying.

A few strategically placed photos of family members are an optional extra and I’ve seen at least two framed certificates. |I couldn’t tell you what these are for but any certificate that warrants framing must surely be for something pretty special.

Most of my certificates are from the last century and for things like shorthand speeds, junior level table tennis and sponsored bike rides for now-defunct charities. In the unlikely event I’m called upon to speak through my phone camera to Huw Edwards during lockdown, they’re going straight on the wall, blown up on a photocopier so everyone can read them and be suitably unimpressed.

My favourite interviewees are those who film themselves with shamelessly austere domestic backdrops which resemble an East German prison cell more than a modern home.

At least these people aren’t trying to cram their whole lives into the viewfinder. Plus, they have considerably less de-cluttering to do when the tips are open again.

‘My favourite interviewees are those who film themselves with shamelessly austere domestic backdrops’