LAST year I was really, seriously famous. Famous in the Channel Islands, that is. Until my brief sojourn in Jersey ended last month I was that most deservedly lampooned small-screen creation, the local TV anchorman. But my micro-fame as the Alan Partridge of St Helier was far from the pleasurable fest of freebies, village fête openings and knee-tremblers with nubile young television wannabes that I had imagined when I accepted the job.

I blush to admit that I grew up dreaming that I might one day soar to the firmament occupied by Mike Neville, Bob Warman and Fred Dinenage. Who, you ask? Deities in their own regions, they are the linchpins of local news around the British Isles: adored by lonely spinsters, revered as judges of flower shows, stalwarts of school governing bodies and magistrates’ benches up and down the land.

My ambition was not entirely to achieve fun-sized stardom. It was buttressed by an honest passion for local news, rooted in my happy journalistic beginnings on a weekly local paper 17 years before. Then, stories of prize-winning cucumbers and golden wedding accounts of a lifetime’s give and take had enthralled me. But the world had shrunk since. Although I risk earning myself a place in Pseuds’ Corner by saying so, the people of the Aceh peninsula had become the new neighbours. For some inexplicable reason I had failed to notice this encouraging sign of personal development.

Last summer I gave up my job on Radio 4 to front Channel Report, the long-running “flagship” of Channel Television, the islands’ ITV contractor. Flagship is a grandiose title; it was the station’s only regular daily production, if you exclude the filler of children’s birthday greetings presented by a cheery actor and a puppet called Oscar Puffin operated by a man kneeling on the floor with an arm shoved up the bird’s backside.

I have to admit it had sounded like fun: to be a big fish in a small pool, to live on a beautiful temperate island, to escape from the grime and crime of the metropolis. But I had not reckoned on my plan’s tragic flaw: I was taking myself along too.

Channel, with a staff of around 50, is by far the tiniest of the original ITV franchisees. It clings tenaciously to existence after 42 years serving the 150,000 residents of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, resolutely independent despite the amalgamation of most of its ITV bedfellows. “Only someone with a very tidy mind would bother to buy Channel,” my predecessor told me witheringly, as he tugged the rip cord and jumped, quelling some of my misgivings but igniting others.

I prepared minutely for my new role, splurging a fortune on Savile Row tailoring, attending the dentist, the barber and beautician. I memorised quirky Jersey-French pronunciations, plodded through the Dame of Sark’s autobiography and other instructive histories, and acquainted myself with the perilous local sensi- tivities of terms such as “money launderer”, “tax dodger” and “Nazi collaborator”. I even downloaded the Bergerac theme tune to my mobile phone as a sort of devotional act.

Channel Report was re-launched last September with zippy new opening titles, a vast, redesigned studio set, fresh-faced presentation duo on its plump blue banquette, a beefed-up reporting team and a commitment to a sharper, contemporary agenda. With no trace of self-consciousness we did a deadpan delivery of our headline story on re-launch night: “Shopping survey: what’s in your basket?” Hard-hitting stuff.

An apparatchik from Ofcom turned up for a snoop, asked for me by name when told of my appointment and seemed delighted to shake my hand. “I just wanted to say hello because I miss you on Radio 4. Such a loss,” she said. I gulped back tears as it began to dawn on me that I had almost certainly just steered myself into professional oblivion.

Undeterred, I quickly acquired that cheeky wink that is the local TV man’s stock in trade, learned to loll nonchalantly on the sofa, eyes and teeth twinkling at the antics of kittens and puppies, brow furrowed in pity for the victims of chip-pan blazes and car shunts. I cast adoring glances at my pregnant co-presenter at regular intervals, cultivated that famili- arity with her that, we were told, viewers love. We even quipped on air about her swelling bump after viewers queried the gal’s carb intake.

But from the outset I was spectacularly unsuited to the work: my eyesight was so poor that I had to squint to read the teleprompt, thus appearing to resemble a leering Wilfred Brambell rather than the silvery host of the small screen; I was so deaf that I constantly missed vital cues whispered into my earpiece, such as when to speak, when to shut up and where to look. I could have been caught staring into space 100 times had not my co-host covertly jabbed my thigh behind our little smoked-glass coffee table. These failings flustered me, were embarrassing and made me bratty. Quickly I became the brittle egomaniac of TV fable, so uneasy was I about fouling up.

I was expected to apply my own make-up. At first my efforts with the brush would barely have flattered a paraplegic foot-painter but I did eventually acquire a few rudimentary skills. I settled for looking like a cada-ver of some six months deceased.

It takes considerable talent to be nice on television. The camera can lie if you are clever enough to cheat it. But you must first convince yourself of your sincerity. Beneath the bonhomie and impasto foundation cream that could have in-filled even the lunar facial declivities of Ukraine’s new president, I was squirming at my own performance, a steaming pile of phoney folksiness. I was re-hashing something from the era of Val Doonican, Lucky Ladders and Stars on Sunday . And doing it badly.