Bye Bye Branson

Hello world. I have just come out of a long term relationship – with Richard Branson – and I feel wonderful.

I’ve known for a long time that I was in the wrong relationship. All the signs were there – my friends kept telling me to leave him and my mother disapproved. Plus I didn’t like his beard.

Other suitors would call me up occasionally to see if I couldn’t be tempted to stray. Yet for reasons unbeknown to me, I stayed, despite his abusive nature. I stuck it out for FOUR YEARS. I stood by him when he wouldn’t take my calls, when he’d put me through to call centres so far from the UK that his assistants didn’t even speak English.

Relationships are supposed to make you both grow and develop as people. I grew into someone who could spend an hour on hold, plotting ways to bring down the entire Virgin empire. Branson did not listen to my suggestions about how he could be a better person. The fool.

Every time he hung up on me,cut my internet or charged me £5 for watching porn that I wasn’t watching, I thought, this is it, I can’t take anymore, I’m going to BT.

But changing service provider just seemed like such a faff. So I stayed. I took the abuse. I was a fool.

Now, like all the other customers British Telecom advertise about, I’m going back to BT. And I love it. I no longer have to spend my life furious at Branson and everything he stands for. He’ll continue to be shit, I just don’t have to know. He can take his poor standards and terrible customer relations elsewhere, because I’m out.

Wonderfully, even as I let him know I was leaving, he let me down. As if I needed further convincing that I was doing the right thing. I pressed all the buttons for getting through to the people who deal with break-ups and then got told by an automated voice that I had to go on hold while an operator was found.

The super cool and friendly automated voice then told me that while I waited, I could press one for pop, two for R n B. bla bla bla. Six for classic. Wow, am I sure I want to leave? I don’t think BT give musical options while you wait. Virgin are so cool. So down with the kids. I wish I could be more like a Virgin, with your musical options and your overtly friendly automated voice.

Being a Radio 4 listening, piano playing knob head, I pressed six for classic. Ah, Branson, well done, the dulcet tones of JLS burns into my ear.drum Yes, Everybody In Love was a classic I suppose, but it’s hardly Mozart.

With that, my decision was made even easier. Don’t show off that you’ve got musical options when you clearly haven’t. Just chuck the elevator music on like everyone else and get on with finding an actual human being to answer the phone.

Goodbye Richard Branson, goodbye Virgin Media. I will not miss you. I’m off to find someone else to write stern letters to.