Happiness is a comfortable pillow. Not that I would know, as I’ve never had one. If ever I do find one at a hotel or some such, I will certainly steal it. Even if I’ve chanced upon it sleeping in a high-security establishment such as the White House, or a prison, I will risk the consequences of being caught smuggling it out – it’s that important. Before I die, I must find a pillow that works for me. And then I will die happy, not least because I will leave instructions for my head to rest upon it in my coffin for eternity.

Buying a pillow is like buying a bed, or a house. You can’t know if any of these things will work for you until you have spent a few nights living with them. You can’t try them out properly. Yes, I know there are companies that will take your pillow or bed back after 100 days or whatever if you are dissatisfied. But I never believe them. They wouldn’t really take them back, would they? And I’m not sure I would ever be bothered to take a pillow back, lugging it down the post office squished into some giant envelope. Apart from the faff, there is the shame of having snored and snuffled and dribbled and drooled upon it. No one deserves to have to deal with that.

I must own two dozen pillows. Every now and then, I audition them afresh, one after the other, fantasising that The One is hiding somewhere in my collection. But none of them do it for me. In despair, after yet another traumatic night of interrupted sleep, I storm off to a pillow shop in neither hope nor expectation. I press several plastic-wrapped pillows to my head. If there is no one about, I drop to the floor and lie on them. I normally end up buying one, although I know disappointment comes as standard.

I just made the mistake of engaging with a specialist pillow supplier, one of those slick, online retail operations with an irritating name and a relentless email marketing system. One click and they are on to you for ever. I filled in the questionnaire. Do I sleep on my side, my back, my front or a combination? I don’t know – I’m asleep! Or rather, not asleep. Soft, medium-soft, medium-hard, hard? No idea. How hard is hard? Then: what is my pillow problem – shoulder or neck pain? No. Tendency to sleep hot? Er, no, unless the room is, you know, hot. Allergies? Not as far as I know. Comically, the only other box to tick was “no problem sleeping”. Bizarre. Why would I be putting myself through this if I had no problem sleeping?

By now, I had lost confidence in the whole process, but, having come this far, I made my submission. An appropriate – in their expert estimation – memory-foam pillow was selected for me and dispatched. Hmm, memory foam. Interesting. Never tried memory foam. This could be the one.

What arrived was something astonishingly heavy and very hard indeed. How hard is hard? Now I know. When I came to rest my head upon it, I wondered if I had been the victim of a practical joke. It yielded a little, but only to compact to still greater hardness. I fell asleep quickly, as I always do, but then, as I always do, woke up two hours later. Except now my sleeplessness was accompanied by significant neck pain.

I lay awake, trying to work out what this pillow reminded me of – and then it came to me. That very same week, I had bought a 30-litre bag of topsoil, which I now felt as if I was lying on. Dense, hard, barely yielding. In annoyance, I threw the pillow off the bed. It landed with the heaviest thud, possibly dislodging some plaster from the ceiling below. The dog barked – I assume in relief that it hadn’t landed on him. The search continues.

• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist

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