Why TV's a turn-off

Coronation Street and Ally McBeal? Stephen Lewis finds out.

THERE'S a house in Beech Avenue, Bishopthorpe, that doesn't have a television licence. The boys from TV licensing don't seem to have cottoned on to the fact yet, so residents are still waiting for their first 'name and shame' bus. It's surely only a matter of time.

The family responsible for this dreadful state of affairs is unrepentant. No, they say: they're not going to buy a licence. And they're not going to skulk indoors refusing to answer the doorbell in case it's the licence men on the prowl, either. Why should they? After all, they don't have a TV.

Cue gasp of shock. Cue disbelieving sneers. Cue search for the remote control the lads from the TV licensing office insist is a dead giveaway for the fact someone has hastily hidden the TV before they arrived.

Having spent a robust evening in conversation with Graham Horne and his family I can promise you you won't find it. Graham may be an only recently reformed TV addict - he still, says his daughter Verity, flicks wistfully through the TV Times of an evening, seeing what he's missing - but the TV is very definitely gone. It must be, because Graham's wife Elaine gave it away six months ago.

In its place is a radio - emitting, while I was there, the gently soothing sounds of Classic FM.

Verity, a 19-year-old Leeds University student who's studying, of all things, Latin, is scathing about TV. It was she who persuaded her dad to dump the family TV when she returned home after being at school in Kent. Her aunt and uncle, who she stayed with down south, didn't have one.

"I think it is brain-rotting and pathetic," she said forthrightly. "I went round to my friend's house last Wednesday and watched Ally McBeal, and I thought, what kind of garbage is this?"

Not quite daring to mention, in the face of such decided opinion, that I was a bit of an Ally McBeal fan myself, I related a little conversation I'd had with colleagues in the office earlier that day.

TV was the cement that held our society together, we'd jokingly decided. After all, what would we have to gossip with colleagues about around the coffee machine if it wasn't last night's episode of Coronation Street? And how else are we supposed to know what kind of clothes to wear, what car to drive and what washing powder to buy?

"Our telly broke last night," one of my colleagues said. "It was weird. I had to talk to my boyfriend."

The Hornes guffawed when I told them this. Graham, who runs a green cycle transport business, became enthusiastic about how much more time he and his family had for each-other since they'd got rid of the box.

"We've found a whole new quality of life!" he enthused. "We talk to each-other, listen to the radio, play board and card games, go out more. The reduction in stress levels is amazing, and we don't argue so much any more."

"Actually," Verity corrected him, "there's just as many arguments, but they're much more constructive ones now."

The Hornes, of course, aren't alone in deciding to live without a TV. According to the TV licensing authorities, nearly three per cent of the population doesn't own even a black-and-white set.

That doesn't stop them reacting with suspicion when householders respond to queries as to whether they have a licence by saying they don't have a set.

York pensioner Betty Smith - past-times, reading the Telegraph, the Evening Press and her favourite classics such as Trollope, Jane Austen and EF Benson - says for 14 years she regularly received letters from the licensing authorities reminding her she didn't have a licence.

"At first it was 'have you got a TV?'" she said. "Then it was more aggressive. 'You haven't got a licence. Pay up or ...'."

The message does, at last, appear to have got through, though. "The last letter was very nice," she conceded. "They just said when you get a TV, do tell us." The Hornes will probably face the same scepticism: hence their jokes about the bus with the 'name and shame' poster.

But though Graham admits he still sometimes gets TV withdrawal pangs - he was addicted to current affairs, wildlife and environment programmes - he doesn't regret the decision to dump the box for a moment.

Their home is, admittedly, very relaxed without a TV constantly chuntering away in the corner of the sitting room: and they do seem to have more time for each other and for other things.

"I've been car free for ten years now and now I'm telly free," Graham said. "You can't begin to understand the sense of liberation we feel since jettisoning these useless items."

The decision to discard the TV goes deeper than just a personal choice about the way to spend his spare time, he says. He genuinely believes too much TV can be a harmful influence.

"If mum's sitting on the sofa watching Jerry Springer, the daughter's not being played with," he said. "The kids are being neglected. The TV is a substitute for parental attention. I was in Coney Street one day, and I heard two young mothers talking. One said to another: 'Let's go home, and if there's nothing on TV we'll take the kids for a picnic.' And I thought, why not just take the kids for a picnic and forget the TV."

Verity agreed the TV could easily become a substitute for real human interaction. She was amazed, she said, at the importance placed on TV by so many families.

"I just don't understand it," she said, after telling her dad to hush so she could get a word in. "I've heard the DSS will make a financial allowance to give hard-up families a TV licence because they feel if they don't have one it makes their children socially inept. Get a life!

"We're a very informal family. But I think if a father is a very aloof figure, the kids will get around it by watching TV. They'll end up getting their advice from chat shows. If I want advice, I'll ask my dad."

Expectant pause. Graham started. "And I'll get if from Verity," he said, recognising the cue. And they all grinned.

PICTURE: Graham Horne and his wife Elaine, enjoying more quality time together since they gave up their TV six months ago Picture: Nigel Holland