Talk about a hose job. In these troubled times of gasoline prices as high as $10 a gallon in Greece, the state-run ERT TV channel offered timely advice: steal it.

Don’t know how? No problem. They showed how to siphon it off in a few easy steps, although it might be a bit complicated if your neighbor’s doing it too and you get caught stealing from each other’s cars.

You had to blink and rub your eyes (wait, can’t do that during the COVID-19 pandemic the New Democracy government thinks has gone away) watching the segment to make sure it wasn’t a Monty Python skit.

In a garage with a car repairman showing how to do it – what choice do you have when the government is offering only pittance subsidies and politicians have free cars and free gas and don’t know the cost of anything – reporter Costas Stamou explained it, no advice on how to pop a locked cap though.

“It’s not something terribly complicated … you don’t even need a special tube, even a hose for balconies will do,” he said on the morning news program ‘Syndeseis’, perhaps trying to get viewers for a station so dull you could sand the rust off your car with it, or maybe your neighbor’s car.

This sounds a lot like the Bill Cosby (pre-predator days) bit about how to use a device in which he says, “First, open the package,” but stealing gas is almost as easy! Even columnists can do it, with a little training.

It was juicy fodder for satire too with Luben, a website known for that, mixing a video in response that was viewed more than 170,000 times in one day with the 32,500 seeing the original segment on Twitter.

You might want to pick a car with high-test fuel though, like a shipping oligarch’s Ferrari, because it will taste better if you get too much in your mouth, but you can save any excess for a fiery sword swallowing act.

1. Take off the gas cap and feed one end of the hose into the tank
2. Get your container open and ready to fill
3. Suck on the end of the hose like a straw (if it’s a clear hose watch for fuel to begin flowing through the tube toward your mouth).

As a public service to law-abiding soon-to-be thieves, here’s some additional steps:

1. If someone sees you or unleashes a pit bull, drop the hose, drop the can, and run like hell, and, if you have time, toss a match behind you
2. Hire someone else to do it if you don’t like the taste of gas in your mouth, which is even worse than escargot
3. Use a clear hose but not the same one you use to wash your car
4. Don’t smoke
5. Don’t pick a car in a neighborhood where you could face a beating
6. Spit, don’t swallow

Don’t have a hose? No problem? The technician also craftily showed you how easy it is to use a screwdriver to puncture the fuel tank under the car, although he had it on a lift so you’ll have to crawl underneath to do it – but better wear goggles.

True, this way means that you could catch on fire and the car could explode then, or when the driver starts it, but isn’t it worth the risk to save a few euros? Plus, you’d lead the news on ERT TV: Man Siphoning Gas Blows Up

Siphoning gas has a lot of slang variations, including Oklahoma Credit Card, so now maybe we can add ERT Gas Pass. It’s surprising it took so long for this to air given the number of expert thieves in Greece.

This was advice from pikers, amateurs at theft. If you want to learn from the experts, find a politician because they (non-binary) can show you how to steal faster than a pickpocket on a Greek subway. Politicians are so adept at theft they could siphon gas from moving cars.

If you want to have fun while learning thievery, head for the island of Mykonos, also known as Scamos and find the owner of the DK Oyster bar, where two unwitting American tourists said they were charged 600 euros ($674) for two mojitos and two crab legs, the rum likely diluted too with stuff so cheap that gas would taste better.

Then there’s Greek taxi drivers. Talk about robbers. If you’re not aware, a drive that’s supposed to be 10 euros ($10.52) will cost you 100 euros ($105.17) because they can move decimal points around faster than Bobby Fischer moves pieces doing speed chess.

Among the champion thieves are the owners of seaside clubs stealing public beaches after paying a (wink, wink) licensing fee to the proper official, or just seizing the land. By the way, you do have the right to walk through anyway, but in case they challenge you bring that siphoning hose as a weapon.

One YouTuber couldn’t resist a response to the ERT piece: “In tomorrow’s bulletin, we will learn how to open balcony doors from the outside and the most animal-friendly ways to distract a guard dog.”

Or just watch a government news conference on ERT.