I am not a Harry Potter fan.  I tried to read one of the books but I found it precisely what it is – a book for children that sparked no intellectual interest in me and wasn’t actually all that well written.  I went to see one of the movies but I found it precisely what it is – a kids’ movie with mediocre child actors and a lot of CGI to distract attention from the spaces where the plot, characterisation, dialogue and story should be.

I find it risible to take a train journey (as I did on Sunday) and see more adults in my carriage reading the new Potter book than kids: I do not “get” why the books should appeal to anyone who has gone through puberty with the exception of those who started reading the series as 10-year-olds in 1997 and now, at 20, want to see how things end.

Don’t get me wrong – I am in favour of literacy among children.  I am, however, more in favour of children reading children’s books than I am of adults reading children’s books.  I am 35 years old: if I were to be in the moshpit at a boy band concert or playing on the swings in the park alongside some nine year olds I would be reported to the police.

I also do not believe that it is the role of the BBC to hype commercial ventures to the sky by devoting countless broadcast hours to something that should rise or fall on its own merits or on the basis of paid advertising.  I switched on BBC Radio 3 on Saturday morning and – fuck me gently with a chainsaw – it was playing music from the Harry Potter movies.  (This is not a Potter/Rowling-specific complaint; the breathtaking amount of time handed over to Alistair Campbell to promote the self-admittedly incomplete diaries of an unelected official was, to my mind, at least as shameful an episode for the BBC as its fiddling of Blue Peter phone-ins.)

The really interesting thing to me is that the latest Potter book sold only 2.7 million books in the UK in its first weekend.  It’s a phenomenal amount of books but I say “only” because, by way of example, last night’s Big Brother was watched by 3.1 million people.

The nauseating blanket media coverage attracted by Big Brother is routinely criticised as disproportionate to its commercial appeal.  There are over 60 million people in the UK, so 57 million of them were, after all, doing something other than watching Channel 4 at 9pm last night – yet Big Brother continues to generate daily four-page supplements in the redtops and is deemed worthy of a realtime blog on the Guardian website every eviction night.

If 2.7 million Britons have bought copies of Harry Potter And You Think This Is The Last One But I’ve Left The Door Open For Another Volume In Ten Years’ Time If In Case I Get Down To My Last Forty Million Quid, then 57.5 million Britons haven’t.  Yet to judge from the media coverage, you would think that the figures should be reversed.

Nothing exists in this country unless it exists in the eyes of the people who comprise the media.  And nothing exists in the media unless it is celebriticised and hyped.  So well done Bloomsbury on milking the cow for the last time for a while.  And well done “Dame” Jo Rowling – didn’t she look lovely at the National History Museum reading at the weekend?

I want nothing this society’s got…