12 August 2006 Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Had? A few weeks ago I broke one of my own rules and picked up the phone to cast a vote in the hopes that I could get one of the most annoying contestants in Big Brother history booted out of the house. For once a lot of people thought the same way I did and Nikki Graham was duly kicked out. 'Hooray', thought I, 'I can actually watch the programme again without having to see the gurning features of that little turd again!' So why the hell is she back in the programme? It's a popularity contest - the idea is that us saps in the viewing public get to have a say and it costs us money to do so. I didn't mind risking fifty pence on a phone call in the hopes it would pay off and Nikki would go - but if I'd been told that there was a chance she'd be returned to the house anyway I wouldn't have bothered. I've been scammed. I've been fucking scammed and I don't like it. To hell with the fact it was only fifty pence - I don't like being scammed. Did I mention that I don't like being scammed? Now there's scamming and there's scamming. If I buy some knock-down item from a bloke on a market stall I know I'm taking the risk it's going to stop working after a fortnight. That's an informed decision and I can live with that. But this competition is ran by Channel Four, one of our terrestial televsion companies and silly little me actually expected them to have the wit to realise that ripping off their viewers isn't the smartest PR move they'll ever make. So this week I have to sit down and sift through various complaint procedures and fill out online forms to make a formal complaint because there still are laws in this country and it does seem that you can't just set up a premium rate telephone line and screw people out of money. It's a lot of bother for fifty pence. The vast majority of people who feel like I do right now won't even bother, but I'll get some peverse satisfaction that at least Channel Four will have to go to some trouble themselves when they're forced to make all those refunds. Mind you the incredibly strange fact that quite a large amount of money was placed on Nikki to win the show, at incredibly long odds seeing as she'd already been removed from the programme, leads me to think that somebody at Channel Four will be having a very good year no matter what I do.
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