If you ask me...Some day, that PPI mis-selling phone call of my dreams will come

There can't be many things more frustrating than missing a cold call

Many households may not even realise that they have a PPI policy (Rex Features)

If you ask me, the latest PPI scandal, with banks telling potential claimants they have no case when they certainly do, has made me wonder why we don’t hear more about PPI mis-selling generally. I’d even say my dearest wish is that someone would call me out of the blue about PPI mis-sales, as I know I’d stop doing whatever I was doing to take a call like that.

Even if I was sitting at dinner or was engaged with my knitting (I’m a beginner, so must concentrate hard) or was in the bath, I’d still race to the phone. And if it meant leaving food to go cold, or dropping a stitch of the kind I’ll never be able to pick up again, such is my lack of expertise, or standing in our draughty hallway, shivering in a towel, I so wouldn’t mind.

As it happens, I sometimes look at my landline telephone, which I barely use – it requires you to press the actual digits of a number! mad! – but still incurs rental costs, and ask myself why I don’t just get rid. But then I remember: say a “Michael” from India wishes to call me? Say he wishes to call me and ask: “How are you today, ma’am?” and say he then informs me I may have been mis-sold PPI, even though it may well be I have never bought PPI? Don’t I deserve to know I may have been mis-sold something, even though I may never have purchased it? Wouldn’t you wish to be disturbed, in such circumstances? Wouldn’t you be willing to let your food to go cold or drop a stitch, fail to pick it up, curse, swear, throw the knitting across the room, and never take it up again, or stand shivering in a hallway and, possibly, later contract pneumonia, just to hear that? Wouldn’t it be worth it? And if, for instance, you do actually qualify for a refund, and “Michael” could put you through to a company which would claim on your behalf, and take 40 per cent of what is rightly yours, wouldn’t that be brilliant? Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t that be worth contracting pneumonia for, and then dying in something not hand-knitted, having skipped a meal?

I know the chances of receiving a call like this are practically nil, but say it did come, and I missed it, I know I’d be kicking myself, and I guess you would be, too. I also hope that, one day, someone will call me out of the blue about the car crash I haven’t had and the whiplash I haven’t suffered, but there’s probably even less chance of that. Still, one can always dream, I suppose. Yes, one can always dream.