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While cleaning out a closet - no, not a metaphor, I was cleaning out a closet, a real one - I was confronted by the final two tomes in the Harry Potter series. The first five had been digested before I decided enough was enough, condemning the two concluding volumes to a life co-exisitng with winter boots, gloves and battered copies of Ring Magazine. But staggered by all the hype surrounding the release of the final film, I grabbed the books and succumbed to Hogwarts mania, finally reading the last pair of books.

In three days.

Twelve hundred pages of leaden prose in a mind numbing 72 hours. Basically if I wasn’t reading J K Rowling I was either sleeping, eating or in the shower.

The books string you along with one mystery after another. Rowling is excellent at plot twists and creative entanglements. And, of course, one must profess delight that so many children have been encouraged to read by the series phenomenal success - and I envy their good luck in growing up with Harry, Hermione and Ron.

But while everyone is looking to cell phones and power lines, it may be reading Rowling that is the surest factor in the development of a brain tumour.

This grim, humourless woman squeezes any ounce of genuine fun or revelry out of her works. I can’t get a bead on her at all. The whole Severus Snape conundrum - is he good or really, really bad? - was utterly compelling and kept me glued to the books. The question of Albus Dumbledore and his hidden agenda was fantastic and an excellent warning to young people to be careful of their mentors and guardians.

The themes were good, the overriding message intoxicating…the writing seemingly concocted by a hedgehog with a pencil up his arse.

My head still hurts and the pillow I had to keep beside me while I read the final books (I needed to lash out and punch something in frustration as Rowling time-and-time-again seemed incapable of making a point with any style or swagger) is in need of repair. I would still advise a young reader to go to Susan Coopers The Dark Is Rising series, and then the Hobbit and, when 14 or 15, The Lord of the Rings. Must reads along the way include the works of Roald Dahl, C S Lewis and, the favourite in my young ‘hood, Watership Down.

I don’t think there is long term nutritional value in the Potter series, and possibly its best use is as an inducement for a child to read something else. The ideas rumbling around in J K’s head are first class, the means of delivery decidedly third rate.