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I've just realised that you said "telly" and not "monitor". This may be a stupid question but are you sure you had the right input selected on the telly?

This sounds like your display adaptor drivers crashed rather than just it needing activating. These things can happen!

Exactly what Justin said!

I actually helped someone with this very same query only last week. Some laptops need you to activate the external display output - it's not as easy as just plugging...