Category: Joke Board
Hi.
I don't know the situation about USA but in England people have to pay a tv lisence every year.
People who don't pay they get 1000 pounds fines.
In the following document there are some of the Excuses people use for not having one.
We've heard them all, most of them more than once. But we thought we'd share some of the more imaginative ones here.
The one that didn't get away
An Enforcement Officer could see the TV in use from the road. The householder said he did not have a TV. The officer said he saw the TV, to which, the householder
said that what he saw was not a TV but a fishtank. The officer then asked if the fish was called Michael. The man was mildly amused and relented.
Comedy timing
While visiting a property that was listed as not having a licence, one of our officers could see through the living room window that there was a TV there.
He couldn't get an answer, so decided to call back later that evening. When he came back he walked up the garden path behind a man. The man rang the bell
but didn't get an answer, so he shouted through the letterbox "It's ok, it's only Steve - it's not the TV Licensing man." The door was duly opened and
when the owner of the house asked who the Enforcement Officer was he replied "I'm the TV Licensing man."
The red light - destroyer of damp
A woman claimed to the Enforcement Officer that she did not have a TV, even though he could see one behind her in the corner of the room. When he asked
her about it she exclaimed, "Oh, that one...it's broken". He told her that there was a red light on at the bottom. She replied "Oh, that wee red light,
I just keep that on as it keeps the damp from getting into it".
Milking it
An Enforcement Officer knocked on the door of a suspected evader and asked if he had a TV, to which, the owner said he did not.
The observant officer then asked "Well why have you got a satellite dish on the outside of your house then?"
The man looked down and said with a grin "I have 2 pints of milk on my doorstep Son, but I don't have a cow in the garden!"
Sky or SKY?
When interviewing a woman in London, an Enforcement Officer asked during the conversation if she had Sky. "Yes", she replied. He proceeded to ask her what
channels she watched on Sky and she answered, "I haven't got Sky". A little confused, the Enforcement Officer reminded her that she had just told him that
she had Sky. "Yes, that's right, she's in the pram." She replied, pointing to her daughter.
The mad one
A young man told an Enforcement Officer that he had a TV set but didn't need a licence. When asked why, he replied that if the court thought he was nuts
they would never fine him. The officer continued with the interview, cautioned the young man and asked if there was anything else he wanted to say. He
replied "I am a helicopter." He was fined.
A message from above
"God told me to buy a television to watch the news as he has a very important message for me"
The vicious tomcat
A young woman said that she didn't have a television and the Enforcement Officers asked if they could check. The woman said it was safe only as far as the
hallway, as she would have to remove her cat, which was hostile and vicious towards strangers. The officers said that they would take a chance, but the
lady insisted that it would be too dangerous, so the officers were left in the hall while she disappeared into the lounge. At that moment a ginger tomcat
appeared from the kitchen. The officers stood rooted to the spot as this feline meowed and purred towards them, and then started to stroke itself against
their legs. At the same time, the movement of furniture could be heard from the lounge, only to be interrupted by the occasional call of "come here Tilly
you naughty cat" and "I won't be a minute, I've nearly caught him".
The rest in the next post.
The officers by this time had picked the cat up and were playing with it. One of them called through the door "What colour is the cat?" The lady replied
"Ginger, with a red collar". The description perfectly matched that of the cat in the hall. A minute later the lady appeared saying that it was OK to enter,
so the officer returned the cat to her, and retrieved the television set from the balcony.
Supersonic detection
While visiting a property that was listed as not having a TV Licence a woman answered the door together with some young children. The woman apologised for
being in such a fluster and explained that she had just moved in and was just on her way out to collect the other children from school.
The Enforcement Officer asked if she had managed to get a TV Licence sorted. She said she had and she knew exactly where it was - in a shoebox on top of
the wardrobe in the upstairs front bedroom. She asked if the he could call back later.
When he returned, the woman's husband answered the door. The Enforcement Officer asked if he could see the TV Licence. The man explained that they were
in a bit of a state as they had just moved in and he didn't know where the licence was, his wife normally looked after that sort of thing.
At the exact moment that the officer explained that the licence was in a shoebox on top of the wardrobe in the upstairs front bedroom - a detector van drove
past. "Flippin' heck," the man said, "I knew your detector vans were good but I didn't know they were that good."
The sick cat
The woman claimed that the reason for her not having a licence was because her cat had got sick down the back of the set and blew it up.
"
I don't live here."
Most Enforcement Officers come across the excuse "I don't live here". It's surprising how many are men dressed only in boxer shorts with nothing on their
feet and have "just popped round to feed the dog".
The wife
The most common reaction from men confronted by TV Licensing Enforcement Officers is: "Oh, I thought my wife was dealing with it."
yeah, I like some of them
Those were funny, thanks.
That tv license must be a bear to monitor.
The whole idea of having to have a license to watch TV bugs me, but the excuses were funny. Thanks.
Hi Becky.
At first you might think it is a bad thing to pay a tv lisence but probaply you don't know the following fact.
The lisence is an olternative way of funding for the bbc to carry out its survices. So other tv channels have to advertise to get money but the bbc is free of commercial adverts. So for me it is very good to watch tv or listen to radio without any adverts. So this is a positive thing about it. At least the time they would spend on adverts they do more productive things.
Here in the U.S. we have public broadcasting channels that do not rely on advertising and generally show more intellectually challenging shows than the network and cable channels. But they get most of their money from donations and several times a year have special programming during which they take long breaks (not commercial breaks) where they ask people to call in and pledge money. This is what seems to keep them afloat financially. I guess the idea of this sort of fund raising is so that people who watch the PBS channels can help pay for them, and those who prefer not to watch them don't have to pay for them.
It sounds good what they do in the USA as well.
And i agree with you about people paying if they watch the channels. In England you have to pay if you have got a tv even if you don't watch the BBC channels so this is a good point.
Fortunately blind people in England can pay %50 less than other people and a black and white lisence is even cheeper.
lollol!