It's great being a shambles. Just peachy. Rather than gliding through a staid, predictable life full of contentment and friendship, you lurch from one crisis point to the next, constantly challenged by your own ineptitude. One day I'm going to write a 24-style thriller in which the main character is under constant threat, not from terrorism, but himself. A typical episode would open with him being woken from oversleeping by having his house repossessed because he's forgotten to fill out some forms. It might sound dull at the moment but trust me - once we've layered a pulsing soundtrack over the top you'll need to sprout fingernails at an unnatural rate to keep up with the amount you're chewing off.

I practise incompetence at an Olympian level. It recently took me 21 days to get round to replacing the lightbulbs in my kitchen, which for several weeks had been blowing one-by-one until finally the room was plunged into darkness. For 21 days I had to feel my way into the room like a blind man, then prop open the fridge door in order to have enough light to be able to see. Your eyes get used to it after a while. So does your brain. It became a routine. Soon opening the fridge felt as natural as flipping the light switch. Standing there, chopping onions in the artificial gloaming, all felt well with the world. It took an incident with a broken glass on the floor and a shoeless foot to nudge me in the direction of the nearest lightbulb stockist, and even then I instinctively used the fridge as an impromptu lamp for another two days before re-acclimatising myself to the concept of ceiling-based light sources.

Adding to the confusion, I'm tired. Strike that - exhausted. Working on a TV show might look like a parade of easy-going giggles from the outside, but on the inside it's an endless treadmill that eats time like a sperm whale eats plankton: in immense, cavernous gulps. Yesterday I rose at 9am after three hours' sleep, then stayed in the edit until 6am this morning. At 7am I arrived home and tried to sleep, in the knowledge that I was supposed to be up in about two hours' time. Knowing the builders next door would start clanging scaffolding poles around like an open-air tribute to the musical Stomp at about 8am, I found some wax earplugs and wedged one in each lughole. But there was another problem. Light was streaming through the windows. I searched for an eye mask and failed. But while scavenging through the bottom of an old drawer, I found a pair of black knickers belonging to an ex-girlfriend. That would have to do. I pulled them over my head like a Mexican wrestler until they covered my eyes, and lay down. I probably looked quite dashing.

I tried to sleep. But exhaustion is a funny thing. It sends the brain haywire. Deaf and blind, I lay there with the old Birds Eye Steakhouse Grill song looping endlessly in my head. Hope it's chips, it's chips. We hope it's chips, it's chips.

In between verses I worried that my boiler might malfunction and kill me with carbon monoxide fumes if I fell asleep. I'm not one for keeping up appearances, but even I blanched at the thought of my neighbours seeing my blue, icy cadaver being hauled out on a stretcher with a pair of knickers on its head. That's what they'd remember me for. The fear of this kept me awake until some time around 8.30am, when my bladder complained that it needed to go to the toilet. I got up, but in my confusion - hope it's chips, it's chips - I attempted to make my way downstairs to the loo without taking the pants off my head. I walked into a door. Now I was performing slapstick for the benefit of no one.

I pulled them up just above my eyes, headed downstairs and drained myself. On the way out of the bathroom I caught sight of myself in the mirror, wearing the knickers like a skullcap. The other thing about exhaustion is that it encourages hysteria. I laughed, then saw myself laughing, and laughed some more. I returned to bed, still giggling, and lay there in the dark with the singing Birds Eye workmen driving their van around in my mind. Hope it's chips, it's chips. We hope it's chips, it's chips. I think I even said that aloud at one point. For a moment, I was genuinely insane. At some point I lost consciousness.

I overslept of course, and awoke at 1.30pm in a state of some confusion, stumbled downstairs and opened the fridge door so I could see the kettle - unnecessary, what with the daylight and all. I drank a coffee, phoned the Guardian, and said I was going to start writing. Then I typed the first sentence of this column. Then I wrote the rest. And then you read it. This proves I can, at least, maintain a veneer of efficiency amid the self-inflicted mundane chaos of my life, even if in doing so I end up slightly wasting your time. Other columnists write of glamorous parties and faraway lands, of politics, or romance, despair and elation and the unending mysteries of the human condition. On this page you find nothing but the fevered hope that it's chips, it's chips, and for that I apologise.

It's not so great being a shambles. But it's the only life I know.

• This week Charlie watched 10 million old commercials for a programme he's made that goes out on Tuesday: "The best one is a bizarre old Atari advert in which Morecambe and Wise enjoy a game of Pac-Man at home, which sadly didn't make the final cut."