A 10-year investigation into health issues associated with mobile phones - run by the World Health Organisation (WHO) - will end soon, and will conclude that there's an increased risk of cancer with heavy cellphone use.

Which is fine by me, because I gave up using a mobile over a year ago, and hadn't used one much for a couple of years before that. For me, this latest health scare is just one more reason not to have a mobile. And given that I have a healthy cynicism about such reports, it's not even the main reason.

And I'm no Luddite. Really. I had my first cellphone in 1991 - an NEC P3 - and have owned one pretty much constantly since then. But the cellphone really started to annoy me. I hate being interrupted, especially when I'm away from the office. Why should I stop what I'm doing - which is generally something I want or need to do - just because someone, somewhere else has decided that what they have to say is more important? It so rarely is.

As cellphone technology developed, the ways of being interrupted just increased, what with texts and mobile email. And don't get me started on spam texts. I started to switch off the cellphone for longer and longer periods. In the end, it became nothing more than an expensive piece of jewellery.

Without the cellphone, my life is no longer so interrupt-driven. I get a lot more done.

I do miss it a little. I love gadgets. And cellphones are little gems of technology. I just wish they weren't so annoying.

Now I watch and pity cellphone users as they twitch in response to those irritating little dings that mean a text message has arrived. Cellphones have turned an entire generation into Pavlovian puppets, whose strings are pulled by whoever is at the other end of that call or text.

Blackberry users are the most acute cases, of course. I've never met one who doesn't have the Blackberry Twitch - that rapid eye-flicking as they check the screen every few seconds to see if something's arrived; the nervous grimace when there's nothing (which hits a nerve connected directly to their low self-esteem); or the involuntary spasm when there is, and they must waste no time in reading it. Owning a Blackberry is a statement that "I am so important that I must see everything at once." Maybe that message does just say 'see you tonight' or 'LOL': nevertheless, they must know that now.

Sad.

As for that health scare … well, we'll see. Naturally, the mobile phone industry likes to point out that lots of studies have found no link between mobile phone use and brain tumours. Of course, many of those studies were sponsored by the mobile phone industry. And if you've read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre (which you really should), you'll know to take such studies with a large handful of salt. Even the WHO report has been criticised for skewing its results in favour of cellphones.

So giving up your cellphone for the sake of your health might be a wise move … or not. Who cares when there are so many other good reasons?