BROWN is a boring colour. Even devout chocoholics would have to agree that on the excitement spectrum brown is doomed to spend eternity lurking about on the sidelines with grey and beige, while red, blue and yellow live it up out front with the rest of the big boys of colour.

Few people would care to admit that brown is their favourite colour for fear of being designated a drudge; brown hair is always equated with speccy bookworms, not wild party animals; and brown is the colour of Pauline's endless array of terminally dull cardigans on EastEnders.

So why, oh why, oh why (as I believe us columnist types are supposed to say, oh say, oh say) do people so desperately want to be brown?

Like most things in modern life, getting a dark, rich-roasted coffee bean tan has become nothing less than an addiction. In the same way that women who used to like the odd KitKat are now full-blown chocoholics, and men with a swing door in their trousers instead of a fly are now clinically-diagnosed sex addicts, people who habitually smear themselves in chip fat and lie on the beach on foil-covered lilos now have a recognised psychological condition.

These perpetually brown, leather-look folk are now officially known as tanorexics. It is not just that they actively want to look like a pickled walnut, you understand; they have an addiction and should therefore be treated with kid gloves and have a direct line to Trisha in case they feel like having a cry on national television.

If I see one more whimpering mother on the box saying how she just can't stop her 13-year-old daughter using sunbeds every day during the school lunch hour to maintain her Girls Aloud-style glow, I will stop yelling "don't give her any more pocket-money you daft bat" at the screen and will physically hunt her down instead and pelt her with pickled walnuts until she begs for mercy.

After that tirade, you may find it difficult to believe that I don't have a problem with people wanting a bit of a tan. Let's face it, we all look better with some colour in our cheeks (as long as we slap on the old factor 15, blah, blah, safety, blah).

What I can't abide is people whose sole aim in life is to have brown skin. Getting an even, deep golden tan is time-consuming, boring to the point of unconsciousness and completely pointless.

I look back now on the endless hours I spent on foreign beaches as a teenager and as a young twenty-something and wonder what on earth was going on in my sun-raddled mind. There I was in beautiful countries packed with amazing sights to see and fascinating people to meet, and all I could think of doing for eight hours or so every day was to lie down in my pants covered in oil.

They are less popular now, but when I spent my hols slow-roasting on a beach barbecue no one who was serious about tanning used anything as predictable as Ambre Solaire or Soltan when they could rub themselves liberally all over with something highly inflammable and sunscreen-free.

Back then, when I have to assume my brain was as frazzled as my skin, I tried every ridiculous oil on the market including coconut, which made me into a veritable fly and mosquito buffet, and carrot which, perhaps unsurprisingly, turned me a particularly fetching vibrant orange.

I wouldn't mind so much, but even when I managed to attain a healthy all-over glow - orange or otherwise, I wasn't really that fussy - it always faded within about 60 seconds of touching down in the delightful drizzle at Leeds/Bradford airport. And by the time I went back to school, college or work, I was always near as damn it my usual off-white, semi-skimmed hue again.

But was I secretly suffering from an acute case of tanorexia, only just managing to keep my inner torment under control with the help of factor 2 carrot oil? Of course not. I was just stupid.

Updated: 09:28 Monday, July 19, 2004