Would you like my top tip for “surviving the credit crunch”? Well here it is: ignore it. Whenever someone starts droning on about boiling potato peelings or saving on warm clothing by skinning your cat and turning it into a gilet, simply place a bag over your head (a Bag for Life, naturally), lie down and pretend to be dead. Otherwise, you risk being bored to death anyway. Because this “recession” talk is becoming dull, dull, dull. I don’t wish to offend those with bailiffs at the door but strewth, some of the merde now being spun on the back of it beggars belief.

Apparently, we’re all tiptoeing around siphoning each other’s petrol. Really? How many times have you caught someone with his hosepipe in your filler flap? And supermarkets are reportedly having to put security tags on their organic chickens because we’re sidling in to half-inch them. Sorry, but I just don’t believe this. Paranoid stores are so tooled up against shoplifters that it’s impossible to buy a hair comb legally without 97 alarms blaring at the door and security guards giving you evils. If shop theft is soaring (as reports claim), it’s probably because people can’t face wasting half their lives waiting in comedy queues to pay (strange that we’re all destitute, yet queues have remained super-long).

But it’s some of the absurd “save money” advice that really blows the mind. Here’s one from a quality newspaper: “Stop heat escaping under skirting boards with beading or mastic sealant, saving you £20 a year.” Excuse me – £20 a year? When you deduct the cost of the materials and the fuel driving to B&Q, it’s probably closer to £10, which means a saving of precisely 19p a week. Bob Cratchit would laugh in the face of 19p a week. And what about: “Buy a new freezer and cut electric bills by £34 a year,” when the cheapest, tiniest freezer costs £100 and it would take three years to break even? “Close your curtains at dusk to stop heat escaping,” says another. Close the curtains in the evening? Imagine that!

I know things are a bit rough, but must we lose all perspective and start proffering absurd advice like Top Tips in Viz? (Highlight this month: “Avoid the constant price increases for milk by buying all you’ll need for the rest of the year in January.”) Even moneysavingexpert.com has expressed incredulity at those who have compared our current economic climate with that of the Seventies, when inflation was more than 20 per cent. Maybe we’re overreacting because we’ve had it cushy for so long.

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BACKGROUND

• Bargainhunter: The social benefits of fake tan

• The campaign to save phone boxes

• Tattoos are as subversive as cargo pants

• Bargainhunter: The expense of getting fit

• Living with 20 litres of water for a day

I know I’ve banged on about the credit crunch in this column, but now I’d like it struck from the record, please. There’ll be no such talk from me today. Except shamelessly to repeat one of my favourite Viz Top Tips: “Save money on expensive binoculars. Simply stand next to the object that you wish to view.”

bargainhunter@thetimes.co.uk

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