EVER been irritated by that television buzzing away in the corner of a pub or restaurant?

Or are you frustrated by the fact that your friends insist on having the telly on while they're supposed to be entertaining you?

Well, your dream may well have come true... thanks to a gadget that's already taking America by storm and could be heading here soon.

TV-B-Gone is a new keychain remote control that lets people turn off most TVs, whether it's in an airport, pub, restaurant or home... and I want one!

Hundreds of orders for the TV-B-Gone gizmo - which costs $15 and once over here will probably sell at around a tenner - poured in when the tiny remote control was unveiled in America.

Subsequently, the company couldn't cope with the demand and we can only hope that this is not the end of the matter.

The keychain fob works like a universal remote control - but one that only turns TVs on or off.

With a zap of a button, it goes through about 200 infrared codes that controls the power of about 1,000 television models.

The makers reckon the majority of TVs should react within 17 seconds, though it takes a little more than a minute for the TV-B-Gone to send out all the trigger codes.

Its creator got the idea about ten years ago when he was out with friends at a restaurant and they found themselves all glued to the TV instead of talking to each other.

But haven't we all been in the same situation?

You go out for a quiet drink and a chat and end up bordering on brain-dead watching a programme on the pub telly, usually with the sound turned down.

(In many rural areas on Saturday afternoons, it is interesting to note that groups of young men will gather silently round a television in a pub and be completely transfixed by the football scores changing on Ceefax).

Television is one of the greatest inventions ... and the curse of a nation like ours.

Despite the ready availability of video recorders, our social lives and our everyday conversations are often governed by the television schedules.

Is it not about time that this government promoted Turn Your Telly Off Week, when every single one of us unplugged the goggle box and simply did, God forbid, Something Different.

Think about it.

You could listen to music, go out for a walk along the beach, listen to the radio, read a book, sort all those family photos into albums.

You could write your autobiography, sell your household tat on Ebay along with millions of others, play Monopoly, Scrabble, Twister or Kerplunk, have a game of conkers, or even, Heavens to Betsy, talk to each other.

Its inventor hasn't had a telly for 24 years and if his gadget catches on, he can afford to spend the rest of his life avoiding television.

I'll see you in the queue when it arrives in the UK...

First published: Oct 25