Blogging’s not a job – it’s an expensive addiction

It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this.

It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. I think it might really suit you.’

No, of course not. What Damian actually introduced me to was something far more addictive, expensive, energy-sapping and injurious to health than crack cocaine. He asked me to join his elite team of bloggers at the Daily Telegraph. And now I’m having to go cold turkey and I don’t like it one bit.

The reason I’m going cold turkey — i.e. giving up blogging for a while — is that I’ve been quite ill for rather too long. It started over a year ago with a bout of swine flu, then degenerated into a debilitating condition I could never quite shake off: dry cough, headaches, bouts of nausea, shortness of breath, you name it. I knew things were bad when recently I had to give up exercise and no longer had the strength to wrestle my children when they came home from school.

Anyway, none of this is anything to worry about — I’m being treated and I’m on the mend. But a key part of my cure is taking things a bit easier, cutting out the things that have been doing me most harm. Foremost among these is my popular Telegraph blog.

I’m not boasting. It really is popular. Obviously I don’t always get the 1.5 million hits I had when the Climategate story broke. But in an average week the number of hits I get is roughly twice the circulation of The Spectator, and in a good one bigger than those of the Guardian and the Independent put together.