It’s the little gap after you answer the phone and before the faraway hubbub of a distant call centre assaults your ear drum. For whatever reason, I just can’t fucking stop myself from waiting to hear what comes after that gap.

Naturally the law of averages states that one in fifteen of these calls won’t be some fucking ambulance chasing arsehole hoping to bleed me out of the little money that I plainly deserve after the hideous car crash that left me paralysed from the waist down. I think about the accident often, wishing it had actually paralysed me from the neck down so I couldn’t have answered the phone to listen to this fucking bellend.

No, I haven’t had an accident you little shit, please leave me alone. Next time I’m going to have to go with it, string the fucker along for as long as possible, dangling my paralysis winnings just above him like a parent teasing a wailing baby with a bottle or tit just out of reach. It’ll be so close he’ll be able to taste it. Is that pre-cum?

And then I’ll rip it away from him like the sellotape that took off Commandant Mauser’s eyebrows in the magnificent Police Academy 3: Back in Training, starring Bobcat Goldthwait. Perhaps he’ll ring back and call me a cunt. I’ll record it and post it here if he does, I can fucking promise you that.