Yes, it’s that time of year again, when the little man comes up against the gargantuan greed of the insurance companies.

I had a letter last week. The premium for this year is several hundred pounds up on last year, despite the fact that I have hardly been anywhere in 2020. It is, however, still about £100 cheaper than the year before.

I went on the Swinton site, as I’ve used them as brokers for years, but the drop down menus didn’t work and I couldn’t get into my account. Life is too short to waste time on recalcitrant technology. If you can’t keep your site working you don’t get the business.

I went to ‘Go Compare’. I put a lot of details in. In fact, I could probably describe myself as a writer of biography after all the personal detail I put in. Then I came to a question about how much my last claim cost. Regular readers may recall that I had a rather annoying accident a couple of years ago. How am I supposed to know how much it cost? I pressed the “i” in the circle and it suggested ringing the insurance company. Yes, that seems a worthwhile use of my time.

So I went on ‘Compare the Market’. More biography. More stupid questions. More reminders not to tell lies. Finally, having finished the forms I pressed the button.

They came up with 78 possibilities. The cheapest one was a company called “Go, Skippy!” It was cheap, but the name is not inspiring and the excess is monstrous. It’s also owned by Arron Banks, and as I don’t want to fund his political donations I am glad to give it a miss.

For just over a hundred pounds more I have a choice of two well-known names – Churchill and Liverpool Victoria. Churchill always did well for me until they started racking the prices up, and LV offered a slightly better policy for £5 less. I was tempted by Churchill because they had always offered a great service, but they had ripped me off in the end, so I went for LV.

So, today, for me, the clear winners were ‘Compare the Market’ and Liverpool Victoria. It saved me £360 on the cost quoted by Swinton and Aviva so, irritating as it was, I just had a profitable hour at the computer.