It's not a real Bulldog

The problem with SKY is that it takes up to a minute to change channels – and I cannot record or fast-forward. This is a problem because the only stuff I watch live is sport. The only other things I watch are from History or Discovery or National Geographic and I record these so that I can fast-forward through the advertisements.

When I am watching sport I change channels when there are advertisements on. I hate advertisements – I am already paying a vast sum of money for the service anyway – and the advertisements are totally irrelevant – they are for a UK audiences and I live in Austria – and they are completely stupid – mostly involving furry animals. When did this start?

In one there is a couple sitting in their lounge room and there is a bulldog sitting on the other lounge chair and they are looking at insurance for something and it starts to talk to them about the best insurance – and they listen to it and base their decision on what it says.  

Clearly it is a member of the family. This raises a number of interesting questions. Where did it gets its knowledge of insurance – does it have a business degree – does it work in  the industry?

If I had a bulldog that talked it would not sitting at home on the lounge chair and I would not be worried about insurance. 

But here’s the thing. I can see that it is not a real bulldog. Its movements are stilted and not natural. It is mechanical. These people are being fooled. So is the audience. It is a trick.

In another ad a woman is sitting in a restaurant with her family and a polar bear sitting at the next table starts to talk to her about sea food. She seems a bit surprised – but not as surprised as I would be.

Sure when I was younger and running trading rooms and drinking a lot I used to have experiences like this but I knew what was causing it.

This women seems to think she should buy the seafood that the polar bear recommends and seems reluctant to let her family know that she is in communication with a polar bear. Quite.

And then there are the Meerkats. I have no idea what they do but there are infestations of them and they sing and dance.

So this is all quite normal now and people just sit there and accept it? Well not me. I just move it – well I did until my SKY box broke.

Wolfgang from the local supplier took me through the very many processes necessary to find where the fault lay. This involved software and hardware resets and much farnarkling. 

I could have  solved the problem easily by asking at the outset ‘Wolfgang – what is the most expensive thing to replace?’ and he would have said ‘Why – the SKY Box of course’ and I would have replied ‘Well that’s where the problem is.’

But it took us two days of telephone discussions and a visit to his shop to get there and a new box is on its way from London at a cost – to us – of €290. See you – like me – thought that a faulty SKY box would be replaced by SKY but we were both wrong because my contract is not with SKY it is with Wolfgang.

Wolfgang said I will be pleased with the new box because it is smaller. He showed me a new box and it is indeed smaller – half the size of the old one. I am not sure what I will do with the space we have saved because it is going in the same spot as the old one. 

I asked Wolfgang if there was any way I could get BBC and he said it was theoretically possible but that I would need a dish with a diameter of six meters and it would cost about €20,000 to buy and install and that after the next storm we might have to go to Graz to get our roof back. I said I would think about it.