Ordinary Gweilo

Henry rightly pointed out that Cable TV cunningly give you free channels when they replace (or first install) your cable box and then they take them away again almost immediately, hoping that you will be tempted to pay them large amounts of money in order to watch Sri Lanka beating a park team from Zimbabwe.

Not always true, however. In London I had cable TV and they perioidically ran free trials of the Sky movie channels in the hope of persuading you to sign up. Something went wrong, though, and they forgot to switch the channels off at the end of the trial. I kept expecting the channels to disappear (or a bill to arrive), but this happy state of affairs carried on for many months (if not years).

Eventually I felt so guilty about getting free stuff from Mr Murdoch that I subscribed to the wretched channels. No, not true. In fact, it got to the point where their pricing was such that if you wanted the sports channels you could add the movie channels for a nominal sum, and that is what I did. An honest man again.

Not as good as Chandler and Joey getting free porn, but not bad. Sadly, Hong Kong Cable TV seem to be better organized, and the free channels duly disappeared almost immediately. I was quite getting used to switching on to Animal Planet and watching hundreds of red crabs crossing the road and getting run over.