Words: rentership, n.

LIFE NEED not be a vale of tears. A walk along any high street brings that vista which is the Radio Rentals window, which currently sports a poster: "Discover the Joys of Rentership".

Unknown to any dictionary, this noun suggests a populace sat in a beatific state because it does not exactly own a telly. The woman in the Fulham branch was fazed by the enquiry about its meaning, origins - and whether it differed from the mundane business of simply renting. "It doesn't really, I suppose," she said, scuppered in the attempt to foist a washing-machine on me. "It's all head office." Where a poster about the joys of renting was perhaps seen as a call to go on the game, indeed a loftier calling than producing fodder for digital channels.