I WOULDN'T believe it until I'd seen it in black and white. The cost of watching TV in Poole Hospital for a single day is £5! Five quid for a one-day package! Or a tenner for three!

That sounds about as easy to stomach as a pickled onion on a peptic ulcer.

Newly-arrived patients will think the hospital’s having a joke when first told about that ridiculous sum. It will hurt them when they laugh. And deep in their pockets, too.

How have we come to what seems not far off another tax on the sick? There was a time when leagues of friends would raise cash to provide TV sets in hospital dayrooms. These days they would need to enlist Bob Geldof to find the funds to provide today's tellies for the sick. Albeit for one at each bed.

Hospedia, the company that provides radio, TV, internet and phone services to hospital beds nationally, defends its price hike at Poole by saying its new packages include free outgoing phone calls. Yes, that’s good news for some... but a fat lot of use to the patient who just wants to while away the boring hours watching telly without making calls.

Telly must be good medicine to help patients recover by relaxing watching their favourite programmes. And, when it's working properly, I bet it makes nurses’ lives easier, too.

It doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg to watch TV at home. So why should it cost so much more in hospital?

Hospedia would seem to have a monopoly allowing it to introduce such painfully unsympathetic charges at Poole hospital.

It won’t get a good reception.