Thursday 1 December 2011

Dear TV Licensing

Hi there! How's it going? I'm Davis, Davis McLelland. Just thought I'd take a moment to introduce myself - not that I particularly need to, as will hopefully become clear in a few ticks. I'm just dropping you a line in relation to the ongoing issue with my lack of a TV license. As you've been so diligently informing me over these past six months, I don't appear to have a TV license. I don't actually watch TV, you see. Oh, I have a television, of course, and can often be found consuming programmes voraciously via the miracle of these new-fangled 'Digital Versatile Discs', but I don't watch any live telly. Not online, not on the tube, not even on a cocking smart-phone. See, you might find this hard to believe, but what you have to understand is that I simply have no use in my life for the likes of Strictly Come Scousefucking, Soapstar Superchef or The Only Way is Incest. Tough shout, I know, but I consider it a layer of noise wholly superfluous to my daily existence. Wait, hear that...? - You won't. It's the beautiful, soothing sound of silence. Aaaahhh... 

In a bid to halt the tide of demanding letters plummeting through my letterbox like suicidal lemmings, I thought it would be enough to log on to your website and lodge a simple notice that no license is required; after all, there isn't a single aerial cable connected anywhere in the house, and you said yourselves that the deselection process was quite simple. This was perhaps a touch naive on my part, I will admit; I should have realised that any such notification would be swiftly followed up by a visit from some clipboard-bearing vole-man several weeks later. No worry, though - his timely poke around the property confirmed the absence of any kind of necessity, and he duly went on his merry way, scribbling happily upon his wavering sheaf of forms. 

Imagine my surprise then, TV Licensing, when I returned home this afternoon to find ANOTHER pamphlet crammed through my door, informing me in bright red typeface that my property had been called upon YET AGAIN and was now under "Investigation" for the lack of a license! 

Well, TV Licensing! You can imagine that I considered this something akin to the final fucking straw. "No!", I said, with the strength of character generally resolved for noble war-time Generals; "No more...!" I promptly picked up the phone and dialed the no-doubt premium-rate number listed helpfully within. After enduring an option-selection process so rigorous that one would think I was applying to join MI5, I found myself connected with a decidedly surly-sounding Yorkshireman on the other end ('Geoff', I think his name was). Explaining my dilemma, I was dutifully informed that there are in fact not one, but two TV License databases! TWO! One consisting of people who've said they don't need a license, and another of unlicensed properties to be checked at random.

Two databases, TV Licensing, two - and get this: they're not even connected! So no matter how many times I register the fact that I don't need a license, I will still find myself caught in a seemingly never-ending labyrinth of house-calls and nuisance letters! Well, it was at this strategic juncture that I flung my hands despairingly to the sky, wailing like a madman with a hernia while repeatedly asking myself: what kind of bureaucratic, Kafka-esque nightmare of an operation are you running over there?! 

I cannot tell a lie, TV Licensing: faced with the baffling prospect of a lifetime of perpetual haranguement from puffy, doorstepping doctrinaires, I got a bit sarky with him. Now, fair play to ol' Geoff - he kept his cool, but I suspect that this'll have to be one call chalked down as highly relevant to "future training purposes". Hell, whack my name in a database of aggro customers if you like - better yet, make that two! 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I don't actually need a fucking license. I apologise for the rather protracted rant, but you've rudely curtailed my afternoon nap, and I'm going to have to take at least a couple of hundred Valium to calm myself down again. Do us a favour from this point onward though and kindly do one, yeah? 

Regards, 
Davis. 

PS - Seriously, all the shows I watch are American anyway.