Rediffusion and How to Make Money from Rented TVs
I can’t speak for everyone living in Blaenymaes in the early 1960s, but I can say with confidence that we never actually owned any of the many televisions that passed through our living room. Every one of them was rented.
Luckily for my parents, there were plenty of TV rental companies operating in Swansea at the time and, as you’ll see, they took full advantage of that fact.
The Disappearing Television Act
My parents viewed rented TVs as personal assets they could sell whenever times got tough. The idea that the sets technically belonged to someone else seemed to be of no concern.
When money was tight, the TV would quietly disappear — sold to a dodgy second-hand shop, or to someone my father met at the pub or bookies. Naturally, they’d stop paying the rental fee. Eventually, the company would send someone round to repossess the set.
The Art of Evasion and the Alibi
We were well-trained in avoidance tactics. If someone official-looking knocked on the door, especially if they were wearing a suit, we didn’t answer. We’d sometimes stick our heads out of the bedroom window and shout that our mam and dad were out, while they were in fact hiding in the bedroom or, if it was a bailiff, my father might be in the attic.
(We had a habit of swearing at bailiffs, too.)
By the time the rental agent finally got into the house, there’d often be confusion. The TV now sitting in the living room wouldn’t belong to their company anymore — my parents would have simply moved on and rented a new one from someone else. The usual excuse was that someone had broken in and stolen the previous set.
It got to the point that I suspect one of the reasons we moved to Trapp was because they’d burned through all the rental companies in Swansea.
Outsmarting the Cable Man: The Rediffusion Scam
Rediffusion was Britain’s first cable TV company. They even supplied simplified TVs that didn’t need tuning or an aerial — just plug and play.
My father treated this setup much like the electricity meter: as something to be bypassed. If the subscription wasn’t paid, a man would come round to disconnect the junction box. But they didn’t take the TV away immediately, in case payments resumed.
This grace period gave my father just enough time to borrow a ladder, climb up to the junction box, and reconnect the service himself. Then it was just a matter of keeping the collection man out of the house for as long as possible.
The Final Reckoning: Short Sentences
There were periods when my father would vanish for a week or two. At the time, we were told very little, but I now suspect he was serving short prison sentences for unpaid debts after ignoring court orders.
These were meant to be a “short, sharp shock.” In my father’s case, they never seemed to have the intended effect.