THIS week, I am celebrating a tremendous victory over the might of corporate Britain. When the annals of the great triumphs of the little man are written, this will be up there with David beating Goliath and Darlo beating the Grim Reaper.

Possibly.

My titanic struggle began on Wednesday, November 27. I came home from work to discover that during my absence British Telecom had erected an eaves-high telegraph pole on the kerb near my home.

I noticed it straightaway. I opened my car door and it crashed into a pole that had not been there that morning and had not been there every day during the past 14 years in which I had parked in that very spot.

The pole also created a chicane with a street light so that it was hard for a pram to pass and for my son to cycle by without catching his stabilisers. And it stank. It oozed a thick, black, sticky tar that clung to any fingers and coats that brushed against it.

We live in a preservation area. Before we remove a tree, we have to apply to Richmondshire District Council for permission.

Officers and councillors descend for a site visit. Reports are compiled. Letters are written, meetings held. Yet BT, without any consultation whatsoever, plonked a filthy pole as big as a tree in a most inconvenient position.

Next day, the engineers returned. They’d got their calculations wrong. A taller pole was needed. A technician wiring it up agreed it was in a damn fool position. “I’d complain if it was in my street,” he said. So I did.

That night, lubricated by wine and fortified by a burning sense of injustice, I composed an email to the chief executive of BT.

I fired it off at 12.29am by which time it read as if I’d drained the wine and moved onto the port. I demanded the removal forthwith of the pole which was “both visually obtrusive and physically obstructive”.

BT responded quickly and politely. Next working day, I received an email and a phone call from the chief executive’s office, which has kept in weekly contact since. At a site visit, the local engineer felt he could dig a trench under a backlane and bury the cable.

Five-and-a-half months later, the job is complete. The pole has disappeared. Cement, so quick-drying that the neighbourhood cats weren’t able to leave their paw prints in it, has erased all signs of its existence.

So complaining does work. Even a company as big as BT can bend. And it can do it courteously. But in these days of democracy and consultation, it still doesn’t seem right that one company can arbitrarily install such a filthy and awkward thing without any reference to the people who will have to live in its shadow for years to come.

HURRYING through Hurworth recently, I was struck by the opulent violet flowers hanging, like bunches of grapes, from the vines climbing the houses on the green.

“Wisteria,” said one far more knowledgeable, before she rushed home to watch her favourite Desperate Housewives. Who, of course, live in Wisteria Lane.

Then wisteria burst into the hysteria about MPs’ expenses. David Cameron repaid a £680 claim for removal of a wisteria.

Daniel Wister was a Quaker astronomer, chemist and botanist from Philadelphia. He was one of the businessmen who financed the voyage of the Empress of China in 1784 – the first US ship to trade with China. The other businessmen ordered crates of porcelain to sell on; Mr Wister just wanted some Oriental seeds, and so the wisteria arrived.