Someone I met recently said he doesn’t watch the news. Too depressing. I knew he was a wise man when he said: “The other morning I just watched Pepé Le Pew cartoons.” He was on to something, Looney Tunes are much better for your health than the news. Who starts the day in a better frame of mind? The person who absorbs all the world’s worst nonsense all on one web page? The person who buys a hate-filled newspaper first thing in the morning? Or, the person who is transported back to when he didn’t have a care in the world?

You grow up believing you have this civic duty to be across the news. My grandparents had the Daily Mirror delivered every day for as long as I can remember. They never missed a TV bulletin. They were across the news more than anyone. It made them anxious and scared. My grandma, towards the end of her life, hardly went out. She thought the guy who lived in the flat above had murdered his girlfriend and buried her under his floorboards (the logistics of this never occurred to her) and that Al Qaeda were training in Bestwood Country Park, seriously. News had skewed her reality of the world but the truth is it’s actually much safer than you would be led to believe. And if there’s something you truly have to take action over, news finds you, trust me…

“Consuming the news reduces your quality of life,” says Rolf Dobelli, in Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life.

“You will be more stressed, more on edge, more susceptible to disease, and you’ll die earlier. That’s an especially sad piece of news – but one that does, at least, deserve your attention.”

It’s a book that has had a big influence on me and set me on the long road to leaving the business. I can’t recommend it enough. And if you didn’t need any more persuasion about news being bad for your health, he writes:

“By consuming the news, you’re putting your body under stress. Chronic stress leads to anxiety and digestive and growth problems and leaves us prone to infection.”

I was experiencing this more than ever in 2016. I couldn’t switch off. Most of it didn’t affect me directly nor was it in my control, like much of our lives. I was consumed by anxiety and hopelessness. Did I want to live in this world?

I made a decision when I went on holiday that summer not to engage with any of it. It was both liberating and scary, not being “across anything”, but it also felt blissful. These horrible things would happen whether I knew about them or not. I had no power to change them, I could only change what I thought about them. Focusing on the here and now, the present, the tiny bits you have any influence over, is all you have. Choose wisely. Choose Pepé Le Pew*.

*Other Looney Tunes cartoons are available.