OKAY, this is what happened. I was going about my business when one day I went into the red.

I am not a rich man and most of the clothes I wear are in fact hand-me-downs given to me by three better dressed older brothers.

I only went into the red by a couple of pounds but then that heartless institution we call a bank decided to charge me for this most heinous of crimes.

I am not sure what they do elsewhere but at my bank they have got a great way of milking every single penny out of you.

And milk it they do – with a vengeance.

When one goes into an unauthorised overdraft, they charge you for doing so.

Which seemed pretty straight forward.

I went into an overdraft and I did not have the decency to ring up the bank before hand to tell them I would do this...so go ahead and charge me.

But then I noticed another £25 charge on the statement.

This, it happens, was a completely separate £25 charge for the bank having to pay those couple of pounds.

Confused, I marched into the bank. The advisor had a simple explanation: “The first was an unauthorised overdraft charge. The second was for us having to pay that extra money.”

“But I thought that was the same thing?”

Apparently it wasn’t.

This was like getting a parking ticket, paying the parking ticket and then getting told you would have to pay another equal amount for being issued the parking ticket.

What’s next? Getting charged for getting charged and then getting charged again because you didn’t pay the charge on time?

I am sure they do that already somewhere.

I understand that in the coming months there will be quite a few of us having to get swindled like this.

And yes I am probably stupid enough to do it again.

I can also foresee a time when I will go into an overdraft through an overdraft fee again. How sick and twisted is that?

I am in credit but they issue an overdraft charge making me go into the red. Then a month later they charge another overdraft fee – which they themselves were responsible for.

If there was a time I felt like drowning my sorrows with those fine folk at the Prince of Wales, this was it.