Dear Mr. Willars
Thank you for your insolent communication of 'November 2008'.

Just who the Hell do you think you are to "require immediate action"? As far as I am aware, having a TV licence is not a condition of residence in the UK. Permit me to remind you, that as a mere subcontracting profit-making organisation, you are in no way empowered to make up your own laws.

You state in the first paragraph of your litter that "as yet we have received no answer to previous communications from you."

Would you run that past me again, please? While it's true that I've only received one answer from you in reply to previous communications from me over the last five years, you are hardly likely to have received any answers to communications from me: that's not how letters work, you know.

Passing over that illiteracy, with all due respect, I call you a liar.

Some five years ago you sent a perfectly reasonable letter pointing out that there was no television licence for my address, and as the previous occupier did have a television while she lived here, I informed you that I had just moved in, that I did not have a television, and that I had no intention of acquiring one, but if I did, I would buy a licence.

Is that one of the replies you haven't received? If it is, I'd like to know how it is that you replied to it and said that you would not be writing to me again for a period, and then only to ascertain whether the circumstances had changed.

Since then, I have received a constant barrage of ever shriller demands, and where a few of these enclosed s.a.e. I replied to them, informing you that there was no television at this address, and that I had no intention of getting one. Is this your idea of not having received any communications from me?

Then the letters demanding money with menaces began to arrive. At my own expense I replied, warning you that a repeat of your importuning and threatening letters would incur a secretarial charge for any reply I should make. I did this as a service to all those whom you might intimidate into buying a licence unnecessarily, and to this end I am sending copies of the current impudent demand, and of this letter, to my solicitor, my MP, to the relevant Government Minister and to Private Eye.

I give you notice that from the day this recorded delivery letter is delivered, replying "immediately" in response to your demands will incur a premium of 50% above my usual secretarial rate of £35/hr plus postage and materials, minimum charge one hour.

Since the last time I wrote to you, the Postcode Database has been corrected and my address is included, and presumably your IT software pounced on a 'new' address and saw there was no TV licence for that 'new' address. It is this mitigating circumstance on this occasion which prompted me not to make the charge of which I informed you in my letter of 5th March 2008. However, had your software been properly written in the first place, it would have flagged-up the fact that there was no television receiving apparatus at the 'new' address - from which address, I repeat, I have been writing to you for the last five years - always assuming, of course, that you had risen above your usual level of incompetence and noted the fact.

I can take care of myself, and I'm not afraid of your blustering and posturing, but there must be thousands of old, simple or timid folk whom you are hounding and who will have no-one to turn to, and many of them will be intimidated into buying a licence they do not need. I would call it 'demanding money with menaces'.

Apart from your apology, I don't wish to hear from you again. Let me reiterate: in the unlikely event of my wishing to use a television capable of receiving broadcast signals, I shall get a licence. In the meantime, I take every letter you send me as an insult, not only to my honesty, but to my taste and intelligence.

As a mark of my confidence in your organisation, I hereby withdraw your presumed right of entry to my property, and inform you that any such incursion will be trespass.

You should remain, sir, my humble and obedient servant