Sky’s The Limit...

One of my closest friends became a dad a few years ago and, as he and his wife don’t have any more trustworthy and mature friends nearby, I was asked to look after his child at his house for the day on Saturday while they went out. Part of the unspoken proviso to this deal, obviously, was that there was a responsible adult present with his child and the slightly older bespectacled child who was supposed to be doing the looking after so the missus also came along to supervise proceedings.

Fortunately the child was an absolute angel and he kept me and the missus merrily entertained all day and, even better, when he had an afternoon nap I got to watch the World Nineball Pool Championships on Sky Sports.

Sadly this was a guilty pleasure because our household if a non-Murdoch zone and we refuse to have anything tainted by a Murdoch hand in the house, be it Sky TV, The Sun, The Times or any of his other reprehensible publications. The bigot-tastic Daily Mail would get into our house quicker than any of Murdoch’s rags and that really is a damning indictment on how we generally view the evil Aussie one and his tawdry and ubiquitous works.

Our decision not to have Sky in our house did, of course, meet with some resistance from the boy who likes US TV series and a lot of the stuff on Sky One. I also had doubts about missing potential reruns of the Robin Askwith sitcom Bottle Boys on UK Gold but both myself and the boy agreed it was a noble cause and it isn’t an issue any more.

Or it wasn’t until Saturday when I felt myself wanting to backtrack after watching the nineball. Fortunately I realised that it was the start of a slippery slope and I would eventually become a couch potato of epic proportions if we ever gave in and got a dish installed.

There’s eightball pool, nineball pool, snooker, football, darts, boxing... I may even find myself watching golf which would be the point when I’d realise enough was enough. And they are just the sports I actually like without venturing into the territory of films and imported drama serials.

So I figure out that we are better off without Murdoch and his zillion TV channels. In terms of a protest it may only be a piss in the ocean but it’s our piss in the ocean. The nineball final’s next Sunday, though, so I may well be offering my babysitting services to several with-dish households around that time... Any takers?