As I piloted her nibs' tatty VW north after five days and nights in London, through increasingly hostile conditions culminating in 60mph crosswinds that buffeted the car hither and thither throughout the length of the branch-strewn M74, little did I know worse lay ahead.

After the best part of a week in the capital I thought I'd seen the lot - chicken batter with a salt content of 98 per cent; an epidemic of compulsive jogging among the under-6os; rats the size of, well, rats - but yank down my breeks and call me Farquhar Colquhoun if I wasn't wrong.

It wasn't the debris cluttering the street outside the flat that beggared belief. Nor was it the sea of cat litter and fur blanketing the floor. Not even the gangrenous month-old tangerine mustering at the bottom of the cage of doom formerly known as the fruit bowl. No: the TV was dead. As in: no signal. The aerial, I deduced with all the smarts of a cross between Mike Hammer and Stephen Hawking, had fallen victim to the wind.

On the first evening back it wasn't an issue - we'd recorded Location, Location, Location and were fair scunnered after the drive. That night, I dreamed of Phil and Kirstie, and awoke thoroughly bamboozled by my nocturnal imaginings.

The next evening, I donned my finest alpine apparel and fought my way across snow-struck Glasgow with a case full of poker chips in one hand and a bag of beer in the other for an irregular gathering of amateur gamblers. No TV required.

Come Saturday, though, and all hell almost broke loose. Two episodes of series five of the engrossingly gritty French cop drama Spiral and Match of the Day played out in living rooms up and down the land, but not in mine. BBC iPlayer informed me all too vaguely that MOTD would be available "soon". Soon? Next time they come calling, I'll tell the TV licensing people I'll cough up my licence fee soon and report back with their response.

There was nothing else for it but class-A drugs, deception and murder. Another typical night in Whiteinch, I hear you quip, except the action took place in Albuquerque and the protagonist was Walter White. That's right: about a year after everyone else we got round to watching the concluding episodes of the peerless Breaking Bad. Better late than never.

The TV's back up and running. As usual, I barely watch it. As my late mum used to say when there was no sense to be found, "What's it all about, Alfie?" And no, she never got an answer either.