It doesn’t any more, though, and Noel Edmonds has got a right old cob on about it. Now that Noel’s made his ‘glorious comeback’ – which mainly involves ordering dimwits to open boxes on daytime Channel 4 and banging on about orbs of energy like some kind of swivel-eyed fairground huckster – he’s decided that everyone at the BBC is a great big idiot and so he doesn’t want to pay his licence fee any more.

So Noel Edmonds has stopped, because of what he describes as the BBC’s ‘threatening’ behaviour. It’s an impressive outburst, not least because the whole world – including Noel Edmonds – knows that Noel Edmonds would probably agree to host a show called Noel’s Donkey Masturbation And Anthrax Hour if it could be on BBC One again.

Noel Edmonds used to be Mr BBC. He had a radio show, he presented Top Gear, he had his own fluffy-jumpered quiz show about television and – best of all – he had Noel’s House Party. And, thanks to the unique way that the BBC is funded, you paid for that. When you saw Noel Edmonds play elaborately smug pranks on Eddie Large, or hop around like a giddy bearded elf pouring gallons of goo over Nigel Mansell, he was spending your money.

But now that Noel Edmonds is on commercial television and only indirectly funded by you, he’s had a bit of a rethink about the whole licence fee thing. Now Noel Edmonds thinks it’s all a load of bollocks and nobody should pay it, because the licence fee adverts are a bit depressing or something. Noel told BBC Breakfast:

“I worked for the BBC for 30 years. When I was there it promoted the licence fee by saying how wonderful it was. But now Auntie’s put boxing gloves on. I am not going to have the BBC or any other organisation threatening me. I’ve cancelled my TV licence and they haven’t found me. Nobody’s coming knocking on my door. There are too many organisations that seem to think it is OK to badger, hector and threaten people.”

This weird little outburst came right before Noel Edmonds’ new Sky One show, Noel’s HQ. If you missed it, it was kind of like that TV show Noel Edmonds used to present on Christmas Day, except with about 20 times extra Daily Mail-style public outrage. It was – what’s the word – odd.

But, to be fair, Noel Edmonds has got a point. The fun’s gone out of not paying your licence fee these days. Not so long ago you’d feel more like a renegade spy, living in the belief that a special van drove around the country with an impossibly advanced licence fee detection radar trying to catch people out. But now we all know that there’s just a database with everyone’s details on it, it’s hardly worth dodging your licence fee at all.

And because he’s admitted not paying his licence fee, Noel Edmonds has already got in trouble. There’s talk of him losing his ceremonial title of Deputy Lieutenant of Devon over it. Hopefully, though, the powers that be will see sense and, rather than just sack Noel Edmonds outright, they’ll simply demote him temporarily to Chief Petty Officer of Babbacombe (Scones And Yokel Division).

Ultimately, though, we have to side with Noel Edmonds on this argument. Like him, we’re sick of being threatened and bullied by television. It’d be so much better if all TV shows just fostered unintelligible, scientifically-berserk theories about positive energies having the ability to tangiably move physical objects to disguise the fact that they’re really just programmes about simple people arbitrarily opening some boxes, wouldn’t it.

From The Weakest Link to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, we’ve sat and watched them all. The last game show to cause the elderly to almost faint in excitement was Deal Or No Deal. A 45-minute programme where people open boxes and nothing else. Genius. The only interesting things about Deal Or No Deal were laughing at the oddball contestants and Noel Edmonds. But that’s changed!

Well, for one episode.

Most gameshows rely on questions, which help bring a somewhat interactive manner to the programme because viewers at home can bellow the answers at nothing in particular or throw half-eaten pies at your TV in frustration because Mary from Hull didn't know what the study of water is called. The thick cow. Her £10,000 loss could have been your gateway to more pastry based enjoyment. 

But someone in TV land must have thought that people answering questions for cash was a bit dated. Consequently some bright spark thought that people didn’t need to answer questions to win. So now we have Deal Or No Deal, where 22 people have to pick a box each and hope that there's a high-valued amount of money in theirs and not a low one. Prizes range from 1p to £250,000.  And that’s it.

Someone is picked at random to spend 45 minutes making crap jokes with Noel Edmonds. All they do is pick random numbers, hoping that box 15 will be enough to pay off their mortgage or at least a post-show pint. No skill is involved and the show could be over in five minutes. But no, the bearded twat drags the process out, causing the overweight contestants to sweat in anticipation about what the banker will offer them. Pretty boring stuff.

But hold on to your hats! It’s about to get crazy. So much so that we had to actually take several trips to the toilet before we could type the following words. ONE OF THE BOXES THAT WAS OPENED DIDN’T HAVE AN AMOUNT INSIDE IT! If that’s not worthy of going mental we don’t know what is. The Guardian reports: 

“A vicar taking part in Deal or No Deal opened one of the show's sealed boxes, which are supposed to contain a card with an amount of money on it, to find that it contained only sticky black tape.”  

Sending the show into chaos, Noel Edmonds and his production staff quickly exited the set to discuss what to do. Whilst the camera rolled! Reassuringly, Tim Hincks who works on the show decided he wouldn’t lie to the public and broadcast the arse-up in full: 

“Five or 10 years ago we would have re-edited [it] and covered up," added Hincks, speaking at the MediaGuardian.co.uk Changing Media Summit today. "Now we have a sophisticated audience we must show our workings." 

This makes us wonder. How many other mistakes have been covered up? A full-blown military storm of the Richard & Judy show? A pantomime horse wandering around the set of the Channel 4 News? We want answers and demand to see the Channel 4 vault where all the forgotten programmes are stored. 

If you want to experience the craziness of the Deal Or No Deal cock-up for yourself, it will be broadcast in full on March 26 on Channel 4. We plan to record it on TV, save it on our computer and aim to have 36 copies of it made on DVD. Just in case we lose them. This treasured memory looks set to be bigger then the birth of a child or a wedding.

Read more:

Channel 4 to air Deal Or No Deal Gaffe - Guardian