Net closing around Britain’s No 1 TV Licence Evader
A man who has never bought a TV licence but who watches hundreds of hours of television a year, is just days away from capture, TV Licensing has announced.
The man – known only as No 1 Licence Evader (1LE) – has even goaded TV Licensing by sneaking into the BBC Television Centre and watching the entire 60 episodes of The Wire before being disturbed.
‘Our extensive database reveals that this serial licence evader owned a black-and-white portable in 1958 and didn’t even have a licence for that. For the past half-century he has watched thousands of hours, many in colour, of television with impunity,’ a TV Licensing spokesman said, ‘but his days are numbered.
‘A fleet of our detector vans is closing in on his location and we have received information about his movements through the usual channels.’
1LE has been spotted in various parts of the UK watching television in shop windows – a sighting of him watching Strictly Come Dancing in Dixon’s in Devizes, and the Simpsons in Curry’s in Walsall. Sometimes he takes a chair with him and spends hours glued to up to twenty screens and taking in several different programmes simultaneously.
‘He has been known to enter an electrical retailer’s showroom under the pretence of buying a television set, leaving abruptly when his programme has ended,’ the spokesman said. ‘He has visited relatives, friends, an ex-wife, a very sick patient in hospital, and neighbours under various pretexts. His one and only purpose for these visits is, of course, free television.’
The spokesman claims 1LE has even talked his ways into homes by pretending to be a TV engineer. ‘He spent a whole week with an elderly couple by telling them he had to check the line hold.’
But 1LE seems to have gone too far when he pretended to be an official from TV Licensing checking licences. ‘He would spend an hour looking at a licence. Of course, he had one eye on the television screen.’
The spokesman concluded:
‘Licence evaders should be aware that TV Licensing now has global reach. Recently we tracked down a licence evader living on the Afghan Pakistan border. He was very cross and threatened apocalyptic retribution, but we had to point out to him that you still need a TV licence even if you do just live in a cave and claim to watch only Aljazeera.’
