THE other day I picked up the phone and it was Darren from BT offering me some deal as a "valued customer."

The conversation ended when I pointed out that it was difficult to see how I could be all that valued when my telephone services were delivered by another company entirely.

I tried to imagine poor Darren as a decent young chap, with a family, operating in call centre hell on some remote industrial estate in an area of Britain where there used to be real work such as mining or engineering.

But then I remembered my chips were going cold and I allowed myself the luxury of a good seethe.

A couple of days later I read that BT was considering switching some directory enquiries calls to operators in India.

Accountants in a business which used to be owned by the taxpayers like the idea of cutting labour costs by employing people who are much cheaper.

Darren might well avoid being cast on to the streets by being re-trained in some other mind-numbing role, but can this be right?

It sounds like the thin end of a large wedge of samosas to me.

Many thousands of people are employed in 4,500 call centres across Britain and there is a general perception that working conditions make them "21st century sweatshops."

Certainly, none of the people who bother me at tea-time sound happy in their work.

But I feel a deep sense of unease about this latest move towards shipping work overseas for financial reasons.

It happens all the time in manufacturing companies and there are a lot of displaced workers in Bolton and elsewhere who know this at first hand.

Call centres have been seized on throughout the land as a symbol of regeneration and it does not make economic sense for them to be threatened by alternatives in India.

"Directory enquiries. Dilip speaking. How can I help you?"

"Er, I'm trying to get the number of that Smith bloke who owns the garage on the corner of that back street up Daubhill, near the buzz stop."

"Dobble? What is this dobble?"

I could go on with this, but I am sure you get the point.

The logic seems to be that because nobody in Newcastle would understand this either, cheaper operatives might just as well be baffled in Bombay.

Concepts of cheap labour, however, are relative and I am sure that there are few contact centre workers in Britain who regard themselves as expensive employees.

A study by Manchester consultants Watson Wyatt found recently that five out of ten call centres believe they have a problem with recruitment and eight out of ten are concerned about high turnover of staff.

Remarkable initiatives to tackle this perplexing situation include increasing salaries and offering employees better career development opportunities.

But maybe all this will be in vain when this work -- unpopular with both operatives and customers -- heads out east.

You just know that in 10 years' time Indian politicians will be bemoaning the fact that their call centres are closing because the work can be done cheaper by people ringing wrong numbers in China.