Kayt Turner - 'I know why my memory's so bad. It's not age. It's just that I know too much'

MEMORY. All alone in the whatsit. All alone in the fridge light more like.

You know the deal – you open the fridge door and the realisation slowly dawns that you have absolutely no idea what you went in there for... although you'll probably take the opportunity to retrieve your mobile phone, which seems to have found its way into the salad drawer.

And before you young ones start sniggering, it happens to us all. Well, everyone over the age of 25.

My own memory has definitely started to go in the last few years. At first it was the usual things: pulling into the car park at work and realising that I didn't remember how I got there; coming back from the supermarket without the one thing I had specifically set out for; taking three kids to the pictures and only bringing two back.

But now it's basic things like, you know, thingumies, that I can't remember. I started to introduce Mr Turner to a work colleague recently and my mind went blank. I could not, for love nor money, remember the name of the guy I've lived with for the past 25 years.

The thing is, I know why my memory has become so bad. It's not age. It's not laziness on my part. It's not even that great catch-all excuse, "my hormones". It's just that I know too much.

My brain is now so crammed with completely useless information that there's no room for anything else – like names of spouses.

How can you be expected to remember your own address when you have to retain such vital information as who Jack Duckworth's godfather is?

Who cares if you know the names of your nearest and dearest when you can name – in the correct order – not only all of Joan Collins' husbands, but Alexis Carrington's too.

I know the name of the only player to have won the European Footballer of the Year title four times (and have won a great deal of money with that knowledge) but I can't remember if my little brother said he was coming on Friday or Saturday.

I have forgotten to meet friends for dinner, actually walking past the bar they were in on my way home. But I can tell you how Philip Glenister is related to Amanda Redman.

I cannot wipe from my mind the full names and birthdays of Britney Spears and her sons, but I can forget to send Mother a birthday card.

I don't consciously try to remember all this stuff. It just kind of seeps in. I can be casually leafing through the newspaper and suddenly an inconsequential fact like Madonna being in the Guinness Book of Records will jump out, worm its way into my head and stay there.

The problem is that when this fact goes in, something else has to leave. Sadly for me, the thing that leaves isn't who taught Jake Gyllenhaal to drive, it's what those things that cars drive on are called.

Not much of this information is truly useful. Little of it ever does me any good – my mind usually goes blank when the pub quiz is on. Eventually, I will be a dead-eyed vessel, unable to remember how to walk, but able to go into exacting detail about Isla Fisher's post-baby fitness regime.

Really, it's best summed up by a colleague who told me the other day: "You know shit."