Damn and blast and curse the BBC. Now it has released its iPlayer for the tellybox (I have been using it for radio, and that was bad enough), I am DOOMED.
Backstory: I haven't had a TV in the house for over 20 years (barring four short and ill-advised months in 1990) because I'm a self-confessed television addict. Not the quiz-show variety but a dishonest-to-badness I-can-handle-it addict. In 1987(ish) I refused an invitation from a chum to go out one Saturday evening because (this was not the reason I admitted to the chum) I didn't want to miss Noel's House Party. Oh, the shame of it. That night the stark, harsh, brutal realisation hit me about the chops. It was the equivalent of waking up in the gutter. The next day the demon device left my house, never to return. Cold turkey it had to be.
I rediscovered The Archers (despised but ubiquitous through my childhood) and delved into the delights of Radio 4 for the next two decades, happy with that, and although rather worried by the mass of entertainment suddenly provided by Radio 7 in the last few years, I could still cope.
But now – oh, the smell of sulphur - the Beelzebub BBC has opened the gates of Perdition, in the shape of broadband technology which allows me access (although a tiny screen) to every BBC production online, on my Mac, on my desk, on tap.
It's like plumbing a whisky main into an AA member's kitchen. Not fair. Boooo. Don't expect to see me between now and Doomsday, because I'll be watching some bloody rubbish. Somebody save me.............
