It's car insurance renewal time at Baker Towers, another activity that has been made as complicated as possible in order to confuse drivers and nudge them in the direction of staying where they are even though the prices climb steadily upwards however low your mileage or safe your driving.

Enter the cute furry animals from Transylvania and the irritating moustachioed tenor who cajole us to try their sites and save money.

There is clearly money to be made in saving us money, which begs the question as to whether the insurers could save us all money by genuinely valuing loyalty and old customers and passing on their seductive rates to their existing drivers rather than dangle temptation before new drivers whose current insurers are just as fickle.

My premium was set to rocket by over £200 this year, for no reason other than they hoped I wouldn’t notice, I think. They very generously wrote and told me that I didn’t have to worry about a thing.

They would just take the money from the credit card I used last year. How thoughtful. Enter the vertical rodents and the overweight tenor. It appears I could actually reduce my premium by £100 by going to – wait for it – exactly the same insurer.

I ring them up and share my surprise and suggest that they could have saved both of us time and energy by doing that in the first place.

Out comes the forensic microscope and minute variations in the basis of the calculation are identified, one of which was my estimated mileage.

I did fewer miles last year than I had predicted and had used that as my estimate for this year. And my three points on my licence from 2014 still count against me even though they are spent and will be off my licence by the beginning of 2018.

The real pain is that in order to get a good deal for insurance, for electricity or for your gas supply you have to switch provider every year.

In the words of the great Flanders and Swann – ‘It all makes work for the working man to do’ and of course it must also put the price up even further by adding to the administrative burden of the rather resigned young man with an impenetrable accent who had the difficult job of justifying our engagement in the ritual dance to this perplexed customer.