Russell Kane's rules for an ordered life

My earliest memories are drenched in routines, not all of them imposed, many were chosen, cultivated even. The measurings, countings, checkings – doing things at the same moment in the same way every day. Ahh, just ordering that previous sentence gave me an unhealthy sense of clinical completion.

The older I became, the more it seemed there was some sort of dichotomy at work. There are those of us who are obsessive, and then there are those who are nauseatingly "chilled". "Why worry, why check? Things happen when they happen." Of course I know there isn't really such a simplistic division, but doesn't it often feel so? The obsessed and the serene; the habitual and the haphazard. For all my friends who kept their He-Men, Action Men and comics sealed in paranoid plastic – perfect and untouched – there were as many who smashed the head from Skeletor within hours of ownership. Who remembers the faceless bods on the middle of the continuum? Who recalls the grey people who were "quite careful, but not overly"? They don't really exist; not in any interesting sense. You're either a freak like me, or you're balanced, urbane, even-headed, calm and habit-free (a true freak, in my opinion).

It's my view that these quirks, compulsions and strange propensities (which, let's face it, most of us have) should be celebrated. Why sneer or flinch when a Barry from Wigan reveals his penchant for taking photos of dead cats? Why mock when a Lisa from Inverness demonstrates how she only ever showers in her underwear? No. Instead flex that part of your prefrontal cortex which loves the other and revels in difference. Champion and delight in your silly freakish brethren.

And so to me. Odious psychologising seems inevitable here. I suppose I must, spuriously, sketch the genesis of my freaky habits and obsessive ways. Ach… I feel the itchy growth of Austrian beard when I look into my memory at Mum and Dad's bedroom door: if they were not in there, it was locked from the outside. Even if they were home, the door would be suspiciously closed, sealed off – their possessions and secrets guarded by MFI "wood".

Surely this explains my compulsive lock checking. What if someone got in? What would they do? Often as I camply canter to the train station I'm convincing myself I did not lock the door, that it now gapes invitingly to rapists and thieves. I fantasise how the intruder is already cackling, bagging my things, urinating on to my premium laminate – sexually assaulting my dog. No. No no no no no. Back for one last check. Yeees – get a later train, it's worth it in the name of security. And then the inevitable return to a locked door. Sometimes I feel a wave of disappointment that my compulsive loop of invention has not been proved true.

Habits of timeliness come a close second after locking. Tardiness on any level was strongly condemned by Dave, the father of Kane. Missed a bus? You are a working-man failure. Late for work? Why not just punch your boss in the face and call him a wanker? Worse than physical lateness – financial lateness. What kind of a lax moron would be overdue with a bill? My dad's fear of loans – the possibility of, Christ, I can hardly type it, "falling behind". Behind! Loathsome preposition. "Always be in front, boy. Always on time, mate."

Thankfully Fear of the Late has been tempered in me somewhat thanks to early experiments with marijuana and French prose; though I'm still very much a product of the DNA of over-organisation. Examples: the moment I check into a hotel I remove my shoes and put into them everything I care about. Keys, passport, money, rings and phone. I know where it all is. If I need objects they are within my neurotic grasp. Clothes, always chosen the night before, are folded in the order they'll be needed for dressing, socks through to effeminate Topman accessory.

All my bills are filed in a cream paper folder, date ordered with an alpha-numeric coding system of my own devising to indicate methods of payment and dates. And on it goes. Calories, shower time, the pets' food, millilitres of deodorant… All considered and measured. Some of this no doubt seems weird, annoying, but to me such oddities become jewels when gift-wrapped in the benefits of timeliness and dusted with a smug sense of personal tidy completion.

Food! I'm not freak-free when it comes to gustatory matters, and I use that formal adjective quite on purpose. I'm obsessed with my taste sense. I must get the full flavour experience from anything that enters my jesterly gob. From filet mignon to Space Invaders crisps – the thought of missing a single molecule of tang fills me with a greedy peasant paranoia.

Again, Dave, father of Kane, must have had a hand in this. I can hardly recall a meal which was not smothered in sauces red and brown, or an explosion of Pollockian pickles. Gherkins, chilli pastes, magenta relishes – the most whorish of condiments spilt their meretricious goo on to the pastas, roasts and bakes of my nonage. Enough language. I merely try in words to simulate the greediness of my tongue. I am on a taste spiral. I'm a chilli-adrenaline junkie. I must burn before I smile. I double garlic, I triple paprika – I'll drop a two-handed payload of coriander into a submissive pasanda.

Yet all of this is still, arguably, almost normal. My truly odd ritual borne of flavour obsession is my absolute, fundamental need to blow my nose just before I taste the first mouthful. I don't mean hankie-action on the way to the table – I mean utterly at table. I feel compelled to clear the airways at the last moment; expel every drop of mucus from my hooter so that the full taste of the meal will be mine. This causes friction. Romantic milieux are destroyed by nasal expectoration. The posher the nosherie, the greater the shame. Sadie, my female, has made certain rules. For example, no use of restaurant serviettes when made from linen. Fair enough. But this means most meals are disrupted by desperate trots back and forth to the loo for handfuls of schnozzle-blowing bog roll. I know it's a strange ritual – but I urge you: try it once. Empty yourself into a hankie, then feel the joy of full flavour.

I could go on here. My hair trimming, my dog-biscuit counting, my coffee-granule numbering… The cursory list of the personal liturgies that make me me. But please, let us not judge. I think there's something curiously British about savouring these habits. For most other countries – certainly America, perhaps Oz – habits and eccentricities are often things to be fixed, treated and normalised. I'm proud to live on a little bit of mud that has the opposite view.

The flawed, the strange and the thing utterly off its kilter is where we search for our magic. And it doesn't have to be something as lofty as a postmodern novel, a Bridget Riley painting – or even a heart-felt stand-up show shot through with filial deprecation. No – the DNA of the Brit is twisted quirk. The mundane impulse. The cups in size order, the man who can only poo naked, the girl who speaks in baby language to her mum even though she's 30. So what? So bloody what? Most people are freaks like me – and this rallying mantra is not even a pathetic attempt at comradeship. It's just a fact. A weird, stamp-collecting, sock-sniffing, insect-burning fact.

Russell Kane's Freak Like Me starts tomorrow on BBC Three