Digital Cockup A Success, Say Bastards Responsible For Digital Cockup

Millions of people are today counting their blessings for the privilege living in the digital age, after the great Freeview cockup removed useless TV channels full of crap from their lives and replaced them with some different channels full of crap.

At lunchtime today, 18 million viewers simply retuned their TVs, swore as their living rooms were filled by insane stuttering and broken-up pictures, dug out a tatty user manual, flicked through it, tore it up, trawled through dozens of menus before finding the factory reset, retuned their sets again, unplugged them from the mains then plugged them back in again, tried the manual tuning option out of sheer desperation, looked at their watches, told the TV to go fuck itself, kicked the cat, then repeated the entire process for the hard-disk recorder and several set-top boxes scattered round the house before sitting down for a long night's effort to persuade Windows Media Center that the analogue signal may no longer exist.

Members of the public were warned beforehand that any equipment bought on a Tuesday with an O, W or S in the manufacturer's name or a 2 in the model number should be hit repeatedly with a claw hammer before being disposed of thoughtfully, as attempting to retune such unholy equipment is liable to summon Satan forth from his fiery pit.

"I don't care too much about losing ITV3 or ITV4, because I saw UFO and Kojak thirty years ago and they were shite then," said Stan Wiggins, a coffin-dodger from Tavistock. "All I want is BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. Now it's like watching a different 5,000-piece jigsaw with half the pieces missing, 25 times a second. I said no good would come of it when they brought out colour telly, and it gives me no pleasure at all to say 'I told you so'."

Journalists all over the country cheerfully reprinted a press release saying that the digital cockup had been a success unparalleled in the history of broadcasting, and settled down in front of their Sky-HD box to watch a film that is so new it hasn't even been finished yet.