Chris Titley

Bills are never welcome, especially in the sober light of January.

One of those professional employee motivators once told me I should open my quarterly gas bill with a grin, while silently thanking the company for heating my home for three months.

When I suggested these would be the actions of a deranged individual, he gave me a smile of pity.

The bill I have traditionally resented the least is the TV licence.

Due to bad planning on my part, I have to pay the whole £97.50 now, to add to the post-Christmas reality check.

Before you write in, I know I can spread the cost using the monthly direct debit scheme.

This is a form of payment I have embraced enthusiastically.

A little too enthusiastically in truth.

Thanks to DD, my salary hits the bank and about half an hour later most of it has been siphoned off by various organisations.

You can almost hear the account emptying. So I resolved to meet the cost of the TV licence in full, once a year.

I did just that the other day. In return for my £100, the postmaster handed back £2.50 and a small piece of paper.

At that precise moment, you cannot help thinking of all the bad experiences you help to fund. Jim Davidson, for one.

Anne Robinson and her Watchdog show (where can we go to complain about that?).

Zoe Ball's expenses account.

This will not do, however. I am a firm believer in the TV licence system, save for the fact that people are jailed for persistent non-payment (a more suitable punishment would be to give them a telly that only receives Channel 5).

It has given us the finest broadcasting organisation in the world.

Even after John Birt's determined efforts to ruin the BBC, it remains a doggedly fine institution.

The best way to remind myself that the BBC is still tremendous value for money is to break the licence fee down into more manageable chunks.

For example, I am more than happy to pay a tenner a year to keep Des Lynham hosting the sports coverage.

Sky splashes out hundreds of millions of pounds on sport, but their coverage still looks cheap next to anything fronted by Des.

And thanks to Sky poaching Jimmy Hill, Match of the Day is now even better.

Twenty five quid is a bargain for Radio Four.

The new controller has come in for some justified stick, but he deserves a pat on the back for inventing the arts show Front Row.

And the network is still capable of broadcasting unexpected gems, fictional or factual, that absorb and enlighten.

I would hand over another fiver if the bosses killed off The Moral Maze and 'ickle Daniel' on The Archers.

Another tenner goes to Radio Five for mixing sport and news so enjoyably, and £6 goes to Radio One's Mark Radcliffe and Lard for being the only DJs to be consistently, intelligently laugh-out loud funny.

There's a fiver for Radio Two, too, because I'm approaching that age.

Another £10 is a tiny price to pay for David Attenborough, a genius of monumental modesty.

The Two Fat Ladies get two pounds each.

It would have been more except it might encourage the Beeb to create dozens more, substandard, celebrity chef shows.

I am willing to donate 50p to Jeremy Clarkson's leaving present, but only if he quits public life completely and not just Top Gear.

Five pounds goes to the Alan Partridge creators.

Reeves and Mortimer are rewarded with a fittingly odd £7.63 for being the closest thing to a modern Morecambe and Wise.

Thirty seven pee sounds about right for the rest of BBC's comedy output.

Although I don't watch or listen to it, I cheerfully offer up the remaining fourteen quid for children's and schools programmes.

They may soon come in very handy.

25/01/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.