Does anyone else remember TV Detector Vans? Sinister vehicles with a revolving antenna on the roof that supposedly prowled the streets and could tell what television channel you were watching. And if you didn't have a licence for that television set - kapow. An older person now, I suspect the vans were a con. I doubt they could detect a switched-on television with any degree of accuracy and certainly not which channel it was tuned to. By the time I left home nearly 100% of households had a television. So, all the TV enforcement folks did was check which houses to not have a licence and target them. When I first lived in Inverness I got a letter demanding to know why I didn't have a licence and threatening several unpleasant happenings if I didn't get one. I didn't have a licence because I didn't have a television. Some folk might say that the best thing to do then was just ignore the letter. I knew better. I knew of too many doors kicked down by the TV licence people, who regarded evasion as up there in the scale of criminal activity alongside raping your little sister, cutting her throat was a jagged tin can and feeding her body to the pigs. I went to the Post Office in Queensgate to explain my lack of a licence.