OF COURSE you don’t need to buy a television licence if the only creature in the house who watches the thing is the dog.

Oh yes you do. The man from Sheffield who offered that excuse when the detector van arrived in his street, adding that he was certainly not going to fork out good money for the dog, got nowhere with the TV licensing agency’s officers.

The dog’s master was among almost 350,000 licence evaders who were caught in the first ten months of this year. Viewing illegally can attract a fine of £1,000 — and after paying that you still have buy the licence.

One evader told the inspectors: “That’s not a TV, it’s a fish tank.” Equally inventive was the evader in Newport, Gwent, who said: “I never use my set. I just switched on EastEnders to see if it affected my radio reception.”

Another evader in Dunfermline, Fife, offered the tortuous explanation: “I don’t need a TV licence because I only watch Australian soaps and, as far as I’m aware, you don’t need a licence in Australia.”

For sheer implausibility, the excuse of an evader in South London is hard to beat: “It’s a black and white television. The colour you can see is a one-off programme special.”

Animals often get the blame. One person in Lancaster claimed: “I used it as nesting material for my snake, so it got lost among the newspapers.”

The authorities despair at the excuses. “I’m too busy having vigorous sex with my wife to buy a licence,” a man in Coventry said on the doorstep.

Another evader in Aberystwyth told TV Licensing: “I need my sleep, so I’m not awake long enough to get a licence.”

Staff at the agency’s call centre, who help to ensure that 24.7 million of us pay up every year, at £126.50 for colour or £42 for black and white (yes, there are still 58,000 loyal monochrome viewers) have their share of banter. One caller, keen to pay the lower fee, said: “I’ve only got a black and white telly, honest. Let me turn up the volume to show you.”

But there’s nothing like being on the front line. According to the annual excuses report issued by TV Licensing today, one inspector replied through the letterbox to shouted questions as to who was at the door. He then realised that he was being interrogated by a parrot — watching an unlicensed TV set.

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