Image Credit: Roger Tutusaus

Sign number 101 that you are a university student: you get excited when an unpaid TV licence bill hits the doormat.

Just me? Ok then, but that excitement soon fades – not because another debt notice beats you between the eyes, but because the realisation stirs that you do not actually have a television.

I decided not to buy a “right to watch the box” - or indeed, a box to watch! - on the basis that there are just too many other interesting things to do in Portsmouth.

That, and a personal belief that it is false economy to part with £135 just to watch mostly re-runs, is what informed my decision.

Boy, am I being made to regret it. I have been branded a “law-breaker,” a “criminal” and received a written caution for allegedly persisting to contravene section 366 of the 2003 Communications Act over a period spanning five months.

Except, of course, I have not actually done anything wrong – whatever happened to being innocent until proven guilty?

My only crime to date is indirectly causing a carbon footprint in wasted paper. So pick up the phone and stop this nonsense I hear the reader cry.

Perhaps I might if I had not already informed them three times that I did not own a TV last autumn.

Now the gloves are off because this periodical post still arrives like hate mail; my half-sadistic side wants to see that white van roll up by the pavement while I laugh into a Pot Noodle.

But back to The Legal Occupier (they do not even know my name, much less do they care), versus Auntie Beeb. Pay the fee and end the feud? You must be joking.

Like their constant letters, the BBC is just streaming a bunch of repeats. Besides, when the swat team does finally appear, I will be ready.