Last Wednesday evening, if you are a boy or like being with boys, if you were anywhere near a pub, if you are an avid football fan, or even if you're not actually that arsed, you will probably have watched The Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United on ITV. And very exciting it was too. Not the outcome I personally would have wanted, but watching Ronaldo make a complete hash of his penalty almost made it all okay.

Now normally, when one terrestrial channel has a ratings coup of such strength, the other channels do one of two things: Show something good, that demographic research shows will attract the opposite 'type' of viewer – in this case, perhaps Sex and the City or something about kittens, or alternatively they can cut their losses and just air something a bit crap.

In actuality, at the same time as ITV beamed England's finest footballers to millions of TV sets around the UK, Channel 4 chose to broadcast a 'documentary' about Josef Fritzl called Secrets of The Austrian Cellar. I was hoping that this particular programme and the thought process behind its scheduling meant that it was, and would be, recognised by TV bosses and viewers alike as something no one really wanted to watch. It would seem, however, that I was quite wrong.

The next day at work I overheard a conversation that started as a 'what a good match, eh?' type of exchange, but one of the two men involved soon admitted that he had in fact missed many vital points in the game as he had been ‘flicking between the match and that thing on Channel 4 about the cellar bloke. It's mad isn't it? Fucking weirdo, but it was a well good programme”.

Which leads one to the ultimately rather sad conclusion that people aren’t watching this programme as a serious piece of journalism - wanting to understand, or perhaps get some kind of closure on the horrific incident - but rather that it is interchangeable with football: it is for entertainment and titillation purposes only.

Don't get me wrong, I do not think TV should solely be the domain of entertainment, nor do I in any way, shape, or form think the most challenging thing on our screens should be the number bit on Countdown.

Television has huge educational powers; it can, and has brought life-changing news, images, and information to people for decades, but something about the way this programme was both billed by TV execs and received by its audience does not sit right with me.

If you log onto www.channel4.com now and search for the programme, there is a link, I shit you not, entitled 'All the best bits from The Secrets of the Austrian Cellar, which, perhaps not surprisingly, includes the 'highlight': a tour of the bunker.

Since when was human suffering a spectator sport? And one large enough to rival top-notch football? Perhaps since Channel 4 started making films under the banner of documentary that are, essentially, little more than voyeuristic suffering-porn, you may answer.

But by no means is it just them.

After leaving the office on Thursday, I wandered up to the Oxford Street branch of Waterstones to have a look for a birthday present for my brother. I found what I was after pretty quickly, but had a good old browse around while I was in there and came across a whole section that I have genuinely never seen (or at least never noticed) before - the section headed Painful Lives.

Located in its own bookcase next-door to 'Biographies', it is home to books I have often seen people reading on the tube – you know the ones - sparse pastel covers with titles like Don't Ever Tell and A Child Called It. Apparent autobiographies by abused children, rape victims, battered wives, and a whole host of others that are bought and taken to the beach as that year's holiday-read, or read on public transport to pass the time during the daily commute.

In keeping with the Football Vs Fritzl analogy, this new-to-me genre occupied as much space on the shop floor as the entire football section. Football was, and often still is, heralded as our national pass-time, or even obsession, but it would seem that hot on its heels is ‘other people's pain’.

By Gemma Hughes/MOLI