AFTER more years than I care to count, I’m contemplating a major change in my daily routine.

I struggle to remember a time when I didn’t wake up to the Today programme on the radio alarm.

It’s certainly been the first thing I’ve heard in the morning since I was a teenager. In the intervening years, I’ve awoken to countless stories about bombings, earthquakes, wars and assorted other catastrophes.

For most of the time, I’ve been quite prepared to start the day by listening to bad news. In fact, I have a theory that most news is basically bad, and that we’re only occasionally lulled into thinking otherwise by events such as the end of apartheid, the election of Barack Obama or the octopus that predicted the results of World Cup football matches.

But now I’m thinking of re-tuning the clock-radio, because I just can’t handle the gloom any more.

It’s no reflection on the Today programme, which I still think covers the news brilliantly most of the time. And I shall still be listening to it after getting up because, for anyone interested seriously interested in the news, it’s still the vital agenda-setting programme for the nation.

But I think I shall avoid it until I’ve got out of bed, taken a shower and downed some caffeine ready to face the day.

Because the impression I’m getting from the radio that early in the morning is this: Times are terrible. Why would you want to get up?

Here are some of the messages I’m hearing from the radio by 6.30am most mornings:

• The country is spectacularly in debt from having to bail out the banks.

• It’s vitally important that we sack lots of public servants to pay for it.

•It’s equally important that low-paid people stay low-paid.

• It’s not a good time to be old.

• It’s not a good time to be young.

• It’s not a good time to be middle-aged.

• Whatever else we do, we mustn’t be mean to the bankers – otherwise we’ll choke the recovery which will certainly be underway once we sack enough people.

• But don’t worry, we’re all in it together.

Unwelcome messages like this are pretty hard to take on board before you’ve even fed the cat.

And the rescue of the Chilean miners yesterday seemed all the more heartening at that time of the morning because it was so unusual to start the day with good news.

So, with most of the news still pretty depressing, I may start to voluntarily miss a chunk of the Today programme. I’m going see whether that radio dial can be moved from the spot it’s always occupied at round about 92.9FM, at least for an hour every morning.

Can anyone recommend any good music stations? One that regularly plays Losing My Religion should be just about right.