Joseph and the amazing technicolour television

Walking to the newsagent to buy my newspaper this morning I was surprised to see, in the electrical shop along the street, the face of Gillian Joseph reading the news on all the televisions. This would cause less surprise if I were still in Brixton, as Ms Joseph presents the local news in London, but wasn't entirely what I would have expected in Port Erin. For a moment I thought it must be the main nationwide breakfast show, but then I remembered that actually I'd just been watching that in my hotel room and it had been the usual presenters, among whose number Ms Joseph could not be counted. And sure enough, as I watched, the screen started showing us the travel news and we learned that there were delays on the WAGN and Silverlink services. Where they operate. In London. Three hundred miles away.

Why they would need to know that in Port Erin, I cannot imagine - the only pertinent travel news here being that the 0900 bus to Douglas left early, with the result that I missed it. Perhaps the televisions are set to the London news as a sign of sophistication or something, to impress locals looking for an escape from their slow and rural island life. "Watch this television and be transported into a metropolitan dreamworld of money, glamour and signal problems causing delays on the Piccadilly Line." That must be it.