Tomorrow I’m playing a small role in a Guinness World Record breaking attempt, held here in Bradford.

Gamers are invited to the National Media Museum to try and break the record for the largest number of people playing Nintendo DS games in the same place at the same time.

I’ve agreed to be a supervisor; making sure a group of 50 participants play their DS for ten minutes during the World Record attempt. The record currently stands at 586 gamers.

At this point, I should make a confession. I’ve never even held a Nintendo DS.

My nephews and niece are often found tapping away on their ‘Nins’, as they call them, and I’ve occasionally feigned interest in their games, but I’m afraid it’s something that leaves me cold.

There’s a TV advert showing a family on holiday in what looks like a beautiful Tuscan villa – and they’re just sitting around playing on hand-held consoles.

It kind of sums up how I feel about them; when you succumb to the virtual gaming world, you can lose sight of what’s in the real world.

I know it’s not all daft games – I’ve got friends who do ‘brain training’ on their consoles, and you can build up a portable library on them, which I suppose is handy when going on holiday so you don’t have to squeeze bulky novels into your suitcase.

According to an online ad for the Nintendo DS 100 Classic Book Collection, you “simply hold your DS like a book and use the stylus to effortlessly turn the pages. You can adjust text size…and a bookmark feature means dog-eared pages are a thing of the past.”

Thing is, I like dog-eared pages. I like the feel of a book, breaking its spine, turning pages and occasionally folding down a corner of one so I can re-read bits once I’ve reached the end.

I was an avid reader as a child and still remember the look, feel, even the smell of books I cherished, from the vivid colours of Ladybird fairytales to the pencil drawings of my Famous Five collection. That precious tactile discovery of books just wouldn’t have been the same on a pocket-sized console.

I’ll no doubt feel like a fish out of water at tomorrow’s DS challenge – I’ll be like hapless Jen supervising a gang of Roys and Mosses (if you watch Channel 4’s IT Crowd, you’ll know what I mean) – but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take part in a World Record breaking attempt. As Roy Castle – who I loved as much as the Famous Five – sang, ‘Dedication’s what you need’.