Sometimes, as a TV critic, you doubt your own abilities. Or at least, you should. It's probably the same in any walk of life. There's always someone else who seems better than you at something you do. However, there is hope. It comes in the shape of The TV Expert, usually found on the judging panel of a talent show.

I'm currently a full believer of The Jason Gardiner Theory. Okay, I won't lie to you... I've completely made it up myself. However, it's a good theory... one that will either depress you or make you feel optimistic for the rest of your life.

If you don't know who Jason Gardiner is, let me explain very briefly. Gardiner is a man who has been hired soley to snipe about amateur ice-skaters on ITV's Dancing On Ice. Now, our Jason isn't an expert on ice skating at all. He's an expert on musicals. However, he's paid by ITV, seemingly, to be a complete queen about everyone and repeatedly say "you've got to work on presenting yourself".

Normally, this would annoy me... however, if you put a slight twist on it, it's actually rather positive. You see, Jason Gardiner tells us all that, no matter how little you know on a subject, there's still a chance that, at some point in your life, someone might pay you to do something you haven't got the first clue about. That job with no doubt be media based as every other career seems to value humans who know about the tasks they've been given.

It's not just Jason though. Emma Bunton sits on the same panel, hired solely to be the counterbalance of niceness to Gardiner's yaaboobery. A pop singer and a bloke from the world of musicals... there... on our TVs... talking about ice-skating.

That means you, beloved reader, may well be asked to appear on a show about show-jumping, despite the fact you've never looked at a horse in your entire life.

Dancing On Ice isn't the only culprit. So You Think You Can Dance? features Louise Redkanpp on the panel of judges. She, of course, is an expert in singing insipid pop R'n'B and snaring footballers. In fairness, I wouldn't want to see a show which involved a panel of WAGs all judging various women and the new levels they stoop to in an attempt to bag themselves a footballer...

"I really liked the skimpy outfit... you could definitely get someone from a lower-league club looking like that... but doing anal on the first date... you won't keep your man for very long doing that! That said, it took a lot of guts to do that, so you're going through to the next round!"

Of course, the biggest source of hope of them all is Amanda Holden. Here we have a woman with no discernible talent whatsoever (no, upsetting Les Dennis isn't really a talent as such) sat on a bench staring at people with that odd, motionless face of hers cooing about people, despite having never really conversed with anyone from The General Public.

Like I said, you might get irritated by these idiots... but really, you should look at them and think to yourself that anything is possible. We Brits don't have an American Dream. We've got Amanda Holden.

For this, I can thank my lucky stars that I can rant about TV like I'm an expert when I'm clearly a lucky idiot.