If you’ve ever wandered south over Chelsea Bridge, you’ll have noticed a building with rather grand white marbled brickwork making a brave attempt to steal the limelight from Battersea Power Station. This is Marco Polo House, where QVC The Shopping Channel broadcasts 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In that time they’ll tell you more than you should ever need to know about mops, DVD players, chisels and more besides. Despite frequently having to watch toe-curlingly embarrassing sales pitches through my fingers whilst screaming “no, please dear god no”, I find myself switching over to QVC and their two dozen rivals more and more often – it’s off the cuff improvisation, and often of the highest quality. These channels would like to think that they’re revolutionising the way we shop, but they’re also revolutionising viewing habits. And with my own addiction threatening to spiral out of control, I decide to try and find out exactly what made a cynical person like myself purchase a bi-directional hacksaw from a man in a suit.

As we begin a guided tour with Simon Leach, QVC’s commercial manager, I’m struck by the omnipresent bonhomie; a man cheerfully walks past pushing a trolley with a plastic pelvis balanced on top for reasons I become dizzy speculating upon. Youngsters with headsets bound gleefully down corridors, past large signs proclaiming the importance of ‘openness and trust’, and ‘having fun along the way’. The green room is a riot of blooming flora and giggling guests. On the studio floor in a perfect mock-up of a living room a woman in a leotard is stretching gracefully on a Pilates Performer (only £279.99.) There are no cameras running, she’s just enjoying herself. I’m the only one who bats an eyelid. Could it possibly be that the good-time feeling projected on screen actually rubs off onto everyone in the building? Could this be the UK’s most harmonious workplace?

Presenter Charlie Brook certainly thinks so, and appears to be as addicted to appearing on QVC as I am to watching it. His impossibly amiable style has led to popularity among the partially sighted, some of whom tune in just to listen to his descriptions of jewellery. Exactly how does he manage to talk for two hours, unscripted, about items which don’t even have any moving parts?

‘It’s really tough. I do a great deal of preparation, but when I’m on air it just rolls off the top of my head.’ Apocryphal stories abound of how auditions for QVC consist of selling a pencil or a blank sheet of paper for half an hour, but Charlie considers that a picnic compared to his baptism of fire: ‘I had to talk about a hairdryer, and a curb chain. And I was thinking “what on earth is a curb chain?” and sneakily tried to talk for longer about the hairdryer to avoid moving on. To this day I have no idea what I said, but I got the job, and I really do love it here. I see it as broadcasting on the edge.’

Although the term ‘broadcasting on the edge’ is usually more associated with reporters in flak jackets doing shaky pieces to camera illuminated by anti-aircraft fire, rather than someone with manicured fingers carefully measuring a diamonique toe ring with a wooden QVC ruler, I can see Charlie’s point. My initial fascination for QVC stemmed from seeing Rob Locke (one of QVC’s regulars) present a series of shows while in the middle of a cataclysmic relationship breakdown. The boy was doing his best to enthuse about an infra-red home security camera (‘essential for peace of mind’), but it was clear that inside he was an emotional wreck, and that his dressing room was awash with tears and crammed with comfort food. We got to know his ex-partner’s name, exactly what he thought of her and, later, the measures he took to get his life back on track (self-help courses, weight loss aids) – all, strangely, tying in with products being sold on the channel. We felt for him. And as Simon Leach says, the connection between the presenter and the viewer is very unique.

‘I worked at Harrods for ten years, and I can tell you, the relationship between buyer and seller is far closer on QVC than it ever could be on the shop floor. When the presenter Alison Young first appeared wearing an engagement ring, boy, did those phones light up.’ Alison is QVC’s beauty and make up wizard who talks endlessly with a dictatorial yet maternal pitch about products ranging from Avedea to L’Occitane (the beauty goods on QVC are surprsingly classy, I’m told) and advises on how to deal with any kind of beauty or body problem (waxing the cameraman’s legs live on TV was one her finest QVC moments).

She’s unfazed by the viewers fanatical obsession with her private life. ‘When you’ve been here for eight years as I have, our lives are their lives too. I was getting letters even before I wore the ring on screen, people just knew. They said I was glowing, ha ha!’ Her wedding is to take place later next month, and naturally there’ll be a programme devoted to it, and cameras at the ceremony. Does she not find it strange that viewers feel so attached to her? ‘Not at all. We’re live and intimately in their lounge. I get 50 faxes an hour asking me for advice on health and beauty, and people trust me. They know that I know my products, and that I’m honest.’ It’s certainly a world away from the intimidating nature of department store beauty counters. Simon Leach agrees. ‘Absolutely. The great thing about QVC is that we will demonstrate a product, and then you can choose to walk away. In a shop, your reaction might be “well, it would be rude not to buy it now that they’ve spent all this time showing me how it works.’

Simon takes me up to the gallery to see behind the scenes while the aforementioned Pilates Performer is being demonstrated on air. A large monitor with the heading ‘Scoreboard’ keeps track of exactly how many have been sold, how many are in stock and how much money has been spent so far. It’s a mesmerising spectacle. ‘A supplier once came up here at about 10am and saw £40,000 worth of product fly out of the door in minutes. He had what I can only describe as a religious moment, right here.’ As I’m about to leave, the producer takes a call from Kathleen from Northumberland, who already has the Pilates Performer and would like to do a ‘testimonial’ on air. As she is put through to the studio, Jill the presenter cheerfully greets her and asks how she is. ‘Oooh, I’ve got a bit of a chill, you know,’ says Kathleen. ‘Aaaaahhh,’ replies Jill, looking concerned. And I have my own religious moment, right there, as all cynicism evaporates and I realise that Jill really, really means it.

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Watching shopping channels can be a memory jogging experience. Mainstays of 80s television re-appear to sell us grilling machines and cheap-as-chips winter get-away-breaks in Thassos.

Over on TV Travel Shop, we see Mark Curry, the crusading Blue Peter presenter best remembered for knocking the head off a Lego model on live television. No such larks these days, simply facts to give us on self-catering holidays. Also Adrian Mills, who I hadn’t seen since the mid eighties supplying punchlines to Esther Rantzen’s jokes on “That’s Life!” Now the jokes are few and far between. A good, or a bad thing?