Skip to main content

New TV channel makes me a little seasick

My TV remote has never ventured quite as far as Channel 888 on Sky, but if it did, I'd be settling down for a night of entertainment courtesy of Ocean Finance. Unbelievably, the high-profile broker - which is known for its seemingly unlimited advertising budget on daytime cable telly - now finally has a channel of its own. And on the associated website, you're able to get a flavour of the thrills that lie in store.

Today's 20-minute clip features some stilted dialogue between a roving reporter and one of Ocean's mortgage advisors. After an interminable minute of animated type and music, the excitable pair get talking about right-to-buy schemes for council and housing association tenants. Here's a sample.

INTERVIEWER:
"Chris, what would you say is the most important document for right-to-buy customers?"

MORTGAGE MAN:
"It's got to be the Section 125 paperwork or 'offer to sell' as it's known in Scotland."

INTERVIEWER:
"Which is...?"

Good question. There's no flies on this bloke. And here's the answer:

MORTGAGE MAN:
"The Section 125 is the offer notice documentation that's sent to you by your local council or housing association after you apply to purchase your property from them."

You know what? I'm hooked. From now on, you can forget Jack Bauer on Sky One. Just give me back-to-back Ocean.

"Previously on Right to Buy Paperwork..."
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.
1 comment
Read more

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...
Post a Comment
Read more