ON Monday night my husband won £125,000. At least, he would have done if he'd been seated opposite Chris Tarrant in that TV game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? He got all the answers right, including the incorrect one about tennis.

Actually, he would rather have watched a programme about snakes which was showing at the same time on Channel 4, even though it's the sort of thing that would give him nightmares.

"There's nothing else on," he'd disputed as we sat down in front of the telly with our fish and chips. But I, like 18 million others, have become hooked on the aforementioned quiz show and took command of the channel changer.

Ithought he'd cheer up a bit when he discovered he knew the answers even before the multiple choices appeared on the screen.

But this failed to give him any sense of achievement. It certainly wasn't like the occasions when we've watched University Challenge (or Universally Challenged, as I often feel) and he's correctly got a starter-for-ten about Crosby, Stills and Nash before Smyth-Fortescue of Trinity, Cambridge, could get his finger on the buzzer.

"It's ridiculous. This is far too easy," he said, as Tarrant allowed his contestant to phone a friend to find out which country Pakistan used to be part of.

"Only if you know the answers," said I, repeating what Tarrant had said on the previous night's programme.

"Anyway, it's not about testing your knowledge. It's about taking risks. That's what makes it compulsive viewing."

"If you like it so much, why don't you go on it?" my husband sneered.

"Because I'm not a gambler."

To illustrate this further, I reminded him that I once won a day out at Goodwood in a raffle and that as soon as I'd got there I'd tried to cash in my complimentary £25 of gambling vouchers.

As this wasn't allowed, I'd swapped them with another punter for real money and had a glorious time in the bar all afternoon without watching a single race.

I've also never bought a National Lottery ticket, which means my chances of winning a million are slightly less than the rest of the populace.

What would put me off most of all about appearing on a quiz show, however, is that my mind goes completely blank when under pressure.

My husband would never live it down if, when faced with the question: "What is the name of Captain Kirk's space ship in Star Trek?" I'd have to use one of my lifelines.

This is really all too much. After weeks of being plagued by ill health in our household, the latest victim to succumb to a virus is my computer.

On Sunday I tried to log on and was greeted by a message in Spanish about an anti-telephone campaign, followed by the alarming information that my "operating system is missing". I've had to call out computer whizz Liz again, who has taken away the patient for emergency treatment, and I've retrieved the trusty old typewriter from the loft.

It looks sturdy enough, but what's the betting it'll disintegrate before the week's out with an incurable case of metal fatigue?

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.