I would love to know who invented the call centre.

If I could find whoever it was, I should take great pleasure in subjecting him (or, less likely, her) to any particularly nasty method of torture I could think up.

They are a thoroughly tiresome method of communication, or more accurately an excellent method of ensuring there is virtually no communication between any parties who may be trying to pass on much-wanted information. I speak from bruising experience.

My television suddenly decided to desert me on Sunday evening. It resolutely declined to show any pictures at all, although the programme details were clearly displayed on the screen.

The problem was obviously with the cable company, not with the TV, because it kept telling me "You are not subscribed to this channel", in an horrendous attack on the English language.

Come the morning, I rang the telephone number which was displayed on the screen, hoping to fix a quick restoration of the service. That was where my problems started.

To begin with, a disembodied voice told me they were too busy to take any calls and to please phone again later and that I had not been charged for the call.

Fair enough, so I gave it a little breather and tried again, only to get the same message.

Since it was an early call, I could only conclude there had been a massive failure of the world's televisions and everyone was phoning to report their problems.

Fast forward a couple of hours and eventually I got a voice. Unfortunately, it appeared to be speaking in a strange language which only bore a passing resemblance to English.

Somewhere in the strangled tones, I caught mention of a telephone number which I grasped as it struggled out of the tortured tonsils of the speaker.

Foolishly, I rang off and rang the number I had just been vouchsafed, only to get the same "we are busy, etc." message. So off I went on the merry-go-round again. This time, when the mystery voice spoke, I summoned up all my powers of interpretation to try to actually speak to a living person.

Experience has taught me if you hang on long enough you usually end up with a despairing voice saying something to the effect that, since there is no other way to satisfy your perverse requirements, they will try to dig up a real person.

That did not happen. I just went round in circles pressing every button in sight, inventing a new swear word for each circuit, while this disembodied voice spoke in hushed tones in this unrecognisable language.

She also slowly became almost inaudible. Now, I readily admit my hearing is less than the aural equivalent of 20-20 vision, but not only was she speaking so quietly she might have been in Timbucto but she appeared to be having some kind of competition to see how many words she could squeeze into a minimal amount of time.

I tried to break into the endless chat show to explain what was the trouble but she did not seem remotely interested in my problems. Having lived through this scenario twice more, I put a cold compress on my head 'til my brains unscrambled.

I ended the day very frustrated, my problem still unsolved and calling down a curse on all phantom call answerers in call centres.

I still have no TV and the lines still seem to be permanently busy. I am not a happy bunny.

Forty-eight hours later, I was finally enjoying my reconnected TV - with the help of a friend with better powers of interpretation than I have.