200 TV channels and nearly £100 a month but there is still nothing on

LIKE most people, one of the ways I like to relax of an evening is with my feet up, watching a spot of telly. But in the last few days it’s dawned on me just how ridiculously expensive this hobby has quickly become.

The problem now is the vast diversity of sources of content you can sign up to. Netflix, YouTube, Sky, Amazon Prime, Disney... the list goes on. And the costs can be horrendous.

Obviously, if you want to own a television in the first place, without being pestered regularly by people in detector vans, you’ll need to buy a TV licence. And that’s about £13 per month.

Because my wife’s a bit posh, she insists she can’t live without our basic Sky TV package, so that sets us back a further £22 each month. I have Amazon Prime at the moment, which costs £7.99 – and I’d really like Netflix but it’s going to set me back £8.99 for an HD package.

Because my house is kitted out with Google Nest devices, I’m also really tempted to sign up to YouTube Premium, which is a frankly obscene £11.99 per month. And my mother has recently become hooked h kd on Bib Britbox, so because she occasionally comes over to look after our dogs for us, I feel morally obliged to sign up to that for her, too – another £5.99 per month.

ITV and Channel 4 both offer premium subscriptions nowadays, which mean there are no more annoying ads to sit through, but they’d be £3.99 apiece.

If I wanted to get Disney+ to keep my niece and nephew quiet whenever they h come to stay i it would add another £5.99 to my monthly outgoings and I could, if I fancied, follow a season on BT Sport for about a tenner a month.

Now let’s assume for a moment that I was feeling flush and opted to subscribe to all of these services in one go. I could turn my house into a luxury palace of endless TV content. In total, it would cost... wait for it... £93.93 per month. I’d be a NowTV subscription away from £100 per month. I could lease a car for £100 per month. I rent a small garage down the road from my house for less than half that.

I’m sure at this point you’re all chomping at the bit to point out that nobody actually needs to have that much content in their lives.

Indeed, I’m old enough to remember having just one old wooden TV in the corner of a living room that could receive just three channels.

And when Channel 4 came into our lives I can remember people scoffing at it, because there would have been “far too much choice”. Then along came Channel 5 and we had even more choice.

Then I got Sky TV and there were probably 200 channels I could have chosen from altogether. But, even with all this visual delight at my fingertips, I’d often turn on the telly, only to turn it off again after 10 minutes of frantic channel-hopping, because, I concluded, there was “nothing to watch”.

And even now that all of my TV content is streamed, on demand, I do occasionally sit on my sofa and let out a sigh because I’ve flicked through all the apps and haven’t found a single programme that’s tickled my fancy.

So I’m acutely aware that if I was to shell out £100 per month on a plethora of subscription services I’d not really achieve anything.

I might be promised millions of hours of content in return for my investment, but if there’s nothing I feel an urge to sit through, then what’s the point?

So, I’ve decided, I’m going to take my £100 and spend it more wisely. I’m going to go to the pub.