Independent on Sunday, The: Television: Haven't I seen this show before?

As any addict will tell you, the trouble with multi-channel TV is that once past the terrestrials, there is no turning back. The rules out here are simple: no programme may be watched all the way through. If anyone speaks too slowly they're off (this takes care of virtually every show on BBC4, where they take their Reithian remit a little too seriously).

A typical evening's viewing might therefore include the first five minutes of an elderly episode of Friends which you missed in 1997; enough snatches of a true-crime investigation to find out how they caught whodunnit; sufficient scenes of a new episode of Buffy (on Sky One) to reassure you that, yes, Zander is still fat and yes this final series is rubbish. Plus, a big enough hunk of ER (on E4) to alienate your friends and colleagues by telling them what happens (not much these days actually).

Sit in front of this stuff for long enough and you'll discover that it's all on one giant loop. You can never miss anything because another showing will be along in a minute - either on the same channel (sometimes on the same day), or a different one.

MTV's programming loop is tighter than most and there are some shows - like the gruesome Osbournes - it's nigh on impossible to miss. But there are also shows which have such a repetitive format that it's possible to get deja vu while you're still watching them. MTV's Cribs for example features guided tours of celebrity homes. Each visit starts with the stats: name of owner, location, square footage, number of bedrooms ... There's invariably a rapper. Sometimes more than one. In this line of work someone apparently gives you a manual and then drills a giant hole in your wallet. The rapper's Big House Tour always includes the following: chill-out room, posse, a games room plus pool table, recording studio, a home movie theatre (with proper cinema seats), indoor pool (hardly used), trophy room, a four-poster bed, a vast kitchen - insert joke about not knowing how to cook here - then it's outside to look at the minimum half-dozen new cars (usually at least one Merc and the obligatory black body, smoked-windows SUV). The ordinary pop stars' homes rarely come close.

This week, ex-professional basketball player Jayson Williams went one better. Having ticked off all the items on the rappers' checklist (as well as the Merc and SUV he also had a white Limo and a Hummer) he proceeded to show us his indoor basketball court (complete with players) and roulette table, before hopping on a little all-terrain vehicle and nipping over to a hangar containing his collection of bright yellow and chrome trucks. Climbing into his favourite (all that money and the best thing in the world is to look like a delivery man...) drove it at 70mph around his estate to share with us his collection of turkeys and peacocks, sheep, stable of horses, and lastly, field of Highland cattle - before whacking off a few strokes at his nine-hole (is that all?) golf course.

It ought to be compulsory to date-stamp these shows really, so you know how old the episode is. Otherwise how are we to know that a while after this programme was made, our charming host went on another tour of the estate during which a member of his staff was shot dead. Williams will be tried for aggravated manslaughter (and for trying to make the shooting look like suicide) later this year.

Still you can learn some interesting (if not particularly useful) stuff by flicking through the channels. You can learn for example, that Jennifer Lopez's ex-husband Cris Judd seems nice but has a bit of a girly laugh (US I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, ITV2), and that even though the US must have a bigger celebrity barrel to scrape than we do, they still ended up with a bunch of people you've never heard of.

Rather reassuringly the audience apparently has as much time for their pouting blonde (and her cries of "Let's ahl git nekkid") as we did - she and her thong were last seen heading for the alligators.

Iain Millar returns next week