Using the templates at this Telegraph page I’m asking my bank to refund me the excessive charges levied on my account in the last six years. With a little help, I really screwed up my finances in 2001. Not my banks fault, I know, but their charges- particularly the ones for unpaid Direct Debits which were often larger than the sum of the Direct Debit itself- helped keep me in debt. It’s almost as if they wanted me to stay hovering around my overdraft limit so they could carry on charging me, safe in the knowledge that they’d claw this money out of me when I got a job and took my account back into the black.

Anyway, I’m claiming back well over a grand. We’ll see how it goes.