My land-line telephone rings. It is 8pm on a Tuesday evening, so this means one of two things. a) I am being called by someone wanting to sell me something, or b) someone has died.

I answer the phone to silence at the other end. Then it speaks.

“This is an automated message from Satcover UK. Do you receive satellite services via an outside dish?”

No-one has died!

Unless of course the family of someone I know works for Satcover UK, and decided to use the office phone to send me a coded message about the demise of someone close to me. That would be ‘cold’, but I have read that grief does funny things to people.

I decide to see where the call will go.

“Yes” I inform the machine.

“Congratulations, you have been specially selected to receive two free return flights to Turkey. All you need to do is call this number, 08702 (plus some others I have forgotten)”

They then briefly advertise something else to me, and hang-up.

I am immediately struck by how this is foiling an, up until now, extremely successful method of combating telesales people. I am also unable to say I am registered with TPS. If I am going to have fun with telesales people, I want it to be against a real person. Not a machine.

I realise this is the home-based evolution of comment-spam. Pretending to be a real person whilst really just promoting something you do not need. How am I supposed to exact revenge or have any fun now?

Someone, can one of you please come up with an ingenious way to get your own back on autodiallers, as my lurgy addled brain simply can’t think of anything.