Real life | 9 April 2015

After I phoned the Aviva call centre for the ten thousandth time, a girl called Adele had to sort it in the end. If she hadn’t, I would have climbed on to the roof of the House of Commons in an outfit made of Lycra, waving a banner bearing the legend ‘Drivers For Justice!’

The poor thing wasn’t too impressed with my hysteria at first. ‘Help me, please!’ I squawked into the phone. ‘I’ve been fighting these people who claimed I injured them when I hadn’t for three and a half years and this week the statute ran out on their claim — not just ran out, really ran out. I mean, it ran out three years ago but then the lawyers extended it to give them another chance to submit evidence only they never did because there wasn’t any evidence, and so this week the case was really, really closed and the lawyers declared it not my fault and everything should be all right, only it’s not all right because my renewal quote came through at the same time and the whole thing of it not being my fault is not reflected in my quote and you want another £1,000 a year from me instead of £450, which is the cheapest quote on comparethemarket.com