In fact the doyenne of the Macclesfield legal scene is in a state of blissful ignorance as her suave host Dickon Tysoe backs casually towards the window of his harbourside office and drops the keys down to yours truly below.

Treat it with a bit of respect, he’s warned me earlier, Rachel’s a valued business partner. A valued what? Who talks like that in real life? Anyway, he needn’t have worried. Respect is my middle name. The ‘t’ is silent, mind.

So what are we looking at here? It’s an Audi A5 Cabriolet 3.0 tdi Quattro Sextronic or something. Tysoe’s written it down for me on a bit of paper. It’s also a gaudy metallic blue colour. I’d call it Aruba Blue, only I’d sound like a pillock if I did. Lady’s car, I snort derisively. Oh, well, let’s see what she can do.

I’m under strict instructions from Tysoe not to sit outside in neutral chasing the revs up in case Rachel gets wind. Can’t really see why she would. But if he says so… I fire her up gently and crawl round to the front of the building, just lightly brushing the 19” five-spoke alloys up against various kerbs and bollards as I go. She’s got a nice deep purr, though. You can feel the three litre engine’s got a bit of poke about it.

Now’s my chance to try out Rihanna’s classic Loud album on the Audi’s fancy Bang & Olufsen stereo thingy. Quite tasty, as it turns out. Hanging a left onto Armytage Road, I have to admit I’m beginning to enjoy myself. Just worried someone I know might see me in a lady’s car. I’ve found a big pair of Gucci shades and a Hermes headscarf in the glove box, though, and with these on there’s not much danger of getting recognised.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me, I holler along with Rihanna. I swing right up some miserable industrial alleyway called Wood Street. There’s this moron in a truck in the middle of the road hooting and making circular motions at me with his finger. I give him a finger back and accelerate through the gap between him and wall. Barely a scratch! Might just need to pop into Halfords for a tin of blue though.

I bump down off the pavement onto the Wakefield Road, heading west now. Let’s open this little lady up, I decide. See what she’s got under her bonnet. I floor it, and find myself pinned back against luxury leather upholstery. I jab at various pedals, one of which I’m hoping is the brake. Must be, because now I’m wrestling the rapidly-slowing Audi back into the left hand lane, leaving snaky trails of rubber in my wake. Easy there, I tell her, chuckling and patting randomly at buttons on the dash.

I cruise gingerly up the A643 towards the motorway doing a steady 20mph. The ride’s smooth enough, but there’s a bit of a rattle somewhere underneath and hint of a draft coming in where the passenger door’s out of whack with the frame. Heated seats should fix that! Nice touch. I crank Rihanna up to full volume. VERY LOUD. Not impressed with the B&O build quality though. Knob breaks clean off in my hand.

I hit the M62 and take her up to Junction 22 and back. Nice scenic backdrop. The ride is pert and perky, but there’s something up with the heated seats. My arse is fairly burning up, and it’s like a sauna in here now. Disturbing memories of one drunken Friday night round Tysoe’s. I shudder.

Pulling off again at J25 for Brighouse and Rastrick (thoughts of brass instruments bring back further Tysoe-linked recollections of an unwelcome nature), I’m perspiring heavily and becoming seriously alarmed about haemorrhoids. No idea how you get these windows down. So I press the hood-down button.

There’s a whirr and a clunk and, with reassuring Germanic precision, the hood folds itself neatly away, releasing billowing clouds of steam down the Wakefield Road. That’s better, I tell myself, though the crisp January air is already turning hot perspiration into chilly clammy damp, and I’m worried the semi-sodden headscarf’s going to come loose. I punch the button to get the hood back up, then change my mind and punch again, then change my mind again and punch the button a third time. This time the bugger stops half way.

As I pull into Bankstone’s canal-side HQ complex, I’m half-standing in the driver’s footwell turning back in a vain attempt to get the canopy up by hand. Won’t effing budge though. Now I’m getting angry. Just hope no one’s looking out the windows to witness these undignified scenes.

I decide to get her parked then try again. Backed up neatly waterside, I turn right round, kneeling on the still-very-warm driver’s seat, and continue wrestling frantically with the hood. I turn to use both hands and… Bingo! Canopy starts moving again, followed shortly by… Bollocks! Accidentally stepping back on to the gas pedal, I send her back wheels off the edge of the canalside stone work. There’s a horrible metallic grating as the Audi grinds to a halt teetering above the murky waters of the Calder and Hebble Navigation.

I vault out, Dukes of Hazzard style, quick as you like. That shifts the balance fatally and the grating sound starts up again as she slides implacably back towards her watery doom. Frantically I grab at the rising bonnet and try to shift the balance back. My fags are still in there! Not to mention Rihanna.

Conscious that I’m losing the fight, I glance up towards the sparkling facade of Bankstone Towers and spot Tysoe at his office window. Eerily motionless, he’s just stood there with the colour draining slowly from his slack-jawed face. He stares on blankly as the Audi lurches backwards and the LAW LADY 1 plates disappear into the canal basin depths. Rihanna gurgles into silence. Released from the spell, Tysoe turns quickly away from the window, flicking the blinds shut as he goes.

Minutes later I’m still watching the last giant air bubbles well up to disrupt the swirling Paisley psychedelia of surface oil, puffing on a fag I’ve nabbed from some old bloke walking a whippet. Tysoe bustles out with Rachel. I’ll drive you to the station, he tells her. Dickon, I’ve got my car, she protests. Let’s talk about that on the way to the station he says briskly, bundling her into the passenger seat of his battered Fiat Panda.

Five minutes after that he’s back again looking more than a tad huffy. Walks straight past me into the building. Next thing, his ops man Allan ‘Pops’ Poppleton pops out to tell me: Dickon says you’d best come up for a word. OK, I nod. Oh, and you might want to take those off, he suggests, indicating the shades and headscarf.

Seems Tysoe’s not best pleased. I’m pretty sure he’ll come round soon enough though. I know some blokes out in Full Sutton with the gear to fish her out. They’ll have her up in no time, and she’ll do alright for salvage.

Or rather, they’re back in the guise of something called SMARTYAPPS, attempting to trade on the unwholesome urge to glimpse the naked underparts of Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone that led to countless misspent hours of VCR shuffling back in the 90s.

Confusingly, from what little sense Bankstone News can make of the whole farago, SMARTYAPPS is not a product aimed at children (suggesting that the less kindergarten-friendly Smartapps.co.uk domain was already spoken for), but an offer to make use of the skills of PIA’s “in house experts with full knowledge of the internet, web development and software programming” to get your insurance products turned into smartphone apps (or possibly smartyphone apps, who knows).

The Basic Instinct pastiche might have worked better if they’d come with a line to make sense of it. Sadly, they’ve only got as far as ‘BASIC INSTINCT’ OF SURVIVAL… SMARTYAPPS. That limply ineffectual ellipsis says it all. What a creative brainstorming that must have been. Let’s see: basic instinct of, er… lust… prurience… insurance… cheese… software design - bit boring, though.. ah, yes: survival!

As a refreshing counterbalance to this cynical objectification of women, however, this week’s Insurance Times also introduced a generous serving of homoeroticism in the shape of an ad from insurancecarhire.co.uk. This features a musclebound young medallion man in skimpy black briefs, adopting the step-one stance for the chicken dance, accompanied by the promise “Brokers, we’ve got a little package to offer you.”

Not sure they’ve done their market research that thoroughly.

He insisted that he was really really “sorry that the bank failed” and sorry for all the little people who “got caught up in the financial crisis.” Apparently he had long had concerns about the financial health of RBS, whose over-reaching takeover of ABN Amro he oversaw, but maybe not voiced them at an appropriate volume.

The people in charge of running RBS (e.g. the freshly stripped and now in hiding Freddie Goodwin), Santa insisted, should never be allowed to work in finance again. Curiously he declined to follow through the logic of this pronouncement, by adding that those in charge of regulating this risibly flimsy financial edifice should never work in regulation again.

In retrospect, Santa felt, he might have been remiss in not shouting more. Or more loudly. If he hadn’t been so softly spoken, more people might have harkened to his urgent - if strangely muted - misgivings over RBS.

“I could have shouted louder,” Santa admitted ruefully. But perhaps he’s being too hard on himself - not everyone has the lungs of Brian Blessed. Just in case his softly-spokeness gets him into trouble again in future, maybe he could take some tips from these guys.

Group Armagh’s Parisian parent “fired the starting gun” on 12 January “so the race has started,” the paper reported this week. Given that time is clearly of the essence for the alliaceous insurer, organising the disposal as a competitive race makes a weird kind of sense. In a way.

So who are the runners and riders and so on? Speculation has been rife since various ratings agencies started saying nasty things about Group Armagh back in December (see previous story): QBE or RSA or AXA or Uvavu or someone to purchase the underwriting operations - or some Chinese or Indian people maybe. MBOs for the broking bits perhaps - or maybe Carole Nash to go to BGL - or [insert rumour of choice].

Let’s face it, anything could happen. 

Bankstone News has a few ideas of its own. To avoid confusing business partners with a radical name changes, potential deals with the Armagh Group of mental hospitals or consumer electronics firm Armour Group or IT recruitment specialists Palmer Group would immediately suggest themselves.

Or there’s those Italian people with the ham and violets and cheese and milk and Serie A footballers, and probably some other things for all we know. Anything with Group in it would do - or possibly just Gru. That bloke in Despicable Me, might he be interested in snapping them up for his evil empire? Just a thought.

Anyway, as Alex Always of Jiff so justly remarked in Insurance Age, Group Armagh is “a lovely firm,” so we can only hope they go to a good home.

For more insightful analysis like this sign up for a subscription to Bankstone News today!

“The driver is always the loser,” the Mail report claims shockingly, adding that many claims are not really claims at all - but something far more sinister. The name of the game is trafficking in customer details - a practice that nets insurers a breathtaking £3bn a year, the Mail reveals. It’s all to do with something called referral fees. These had to be unbanned in 2004, apparently, because they help to “grease the system” but now they are to be banned again by Prime Minister David Cameron.

“One of the worst offenders,” the Mail declares, “is Admiral, which generates an incredible £16 million – six per cent of the company’s gross annual profits – from referral fees.” The paper goes on to accuse Admiral founders Henry Engelhardt and David Stevens of having hard noses and “substantial properties in South Wales.”

But Admiral are apparently just the tricorniform tip of a whopping great mountain of dubious dealing in which insurers up and down the land are irredeemably complicit. And then there are money making machines like Helphire who feast on the carrion meat of innocent motorists fleeced by insurance double-dealers, or something, allegedly.

Mark Jackson who helped set up Helphire has a “£3.5 million Georgian manor house” with “immaculate lawns, extensive grounds and impressive views across the Somerset countryside,” a “Grade II listed building, with swimming pool, sauna, nine bedrooms, adjoining lodge, gym and croquet lawn” the Mail copies down bitterly from some estate agent’s set of particulars.

And that’s as much as we can bear to tell you this week, Dear Reader. The Badger beckons. Our throats are parched, nobody reads the last story anyway, and if we don’t get something mailed out to our loyal subscribers pretty soon, there’s bugger all point in bothering.

More half-arsed throwaway cynical plagiarism next week!

It’s bright and early when I pitch up in affluent Wharfe valley fleshpot Addingham to try out Dickon Tyson’s automotive pride and joy, a Fiat Panda 1.2 “Dynamic.”

I’ve come expecting great things, based on Tysoe’s torrid tales of cutting a tarmac-thrashing dash round the Dales in a tiny tearaway box of tricks. First impressions don’t exactly disappoint. It’s way, way worse than that.

Where is the sleek white beast I’ve heard about at endless length from a breathlessly fervent Tysoe? All I can see is a grubby little shoebox of a car with all the sex appeal of a grizzled and ungainly middle-aged man in a casual navy jacket and faded jeans.

I slide in behind the wheel and take a few moments to take in a tidily functional array of controls. Don’t be deceived, Tysoe chuckles, leaning in a little over-intimate through the open driver-side window and patting the roof above my head. Wait til you get her out on the Blubberhouses run and she’ll blow your socks off, he assures me, all jovial. I’ll be the judge of that, I decide.

Key’s in the ignition, mate; you just turn it, and off you go, Tysoe offers after a minute or two. Accelerator’s on the right, he puts in helpfully. Funny!

The sticky thing for changing gear with sits high to my left. The seat feels benchy and non-executive. Like some undersized MPV. I go back to scanning the instrumentation. What’s this do? I ask, prodding at a mysterious red button. Briefly Tysoe’s eyes flash with ill-disguised alarm. You don’t need to know about that, is all he’ll say. I squint quizically back at him, but he declines to elaborate.

See ya, then, I tell him, bunnying out all nonchallant into the path of some foreign looking bloke tearing along in a battered Renault Espace. Makes a big horn-blasting fuss of veering across the carriageway to avoid me. Tosser! Probably Polish. Lot of Poles in Addingham.

She’s got air conditioning, Tysoe shouts after me. I’ll be the judge of that, I decide. Turning North I start to open her out on the Bolton Road, taking advantage of her accidentally discovered steering column adjust function as I go. With a 5-speed manual gearbox, a top speed final of 155, a power output of 44kw@5000, an autotraction control of no, and a sliding roof of option, Fiat are making some pretty impressive claims for the 500’s ugly sister.

The manufacturer’s blurb claims a no-slouch 0-60 in under ten minutes. I’ve only been going a couple of minutes and I’m already up to 40 or 50. So far so good. The handling is willing and responsive as I fling her round the sweeping tree-lined curves of the B6160. Nice, I think, as Jason Derulo introduces himself on the radio and/or tape stereo soundsystem.

We’re nudging 55 now. It’s hard tryin’ to make it in the streets, I sing along with Jason. But, somewhere in the background I sense the gears are trying to tell me something. I shift up to third. Then comes the fateful moment. I’ve just given up fumbling with a tiny metal tin of breath mints, when my eyes come to rest on that mysterious button again. Let’s just see…

As soon as I’ve pressed it I can tell something’s not right. A bleepy honking sound fills the cabin like a security van in reverse and I’m pretty sure it’s not a Derulo remix. Then there’s this metallic-sounding robot bird telling me over and over: Warning - City Mode Engaged. City Mode? What the [expletive deleted]’s that?!

OK, I admit, I’m panicking a bit now. The Upper Wharfe Valley may be many things, but a city it is not! Instinct takes over and I wrestle the speeding Panda into roadside undergrowth, still doing 40-45 easy. There’s some scratching and bumping as we plunge down through brambles and bracken towards some kind of tranquil sylvan rivulet.

Suddenly I feel the front end dip and the tail end flipping up behind me. Next thing I know I’m lying on the roof listening to a ticking sound as a slowly descending shower of parking tickets and toffee wrappers brush past my face. A Copart biro slips from behind the sun visor and catches me in the eye. Bollocks, I think.

Where’s the car, Tysoe demands all wibbly and agitated, as I limp back up his drive. Not impressed with the handling, mate, I tell him simply. Dunno how you’ve kept it on the road as long as you have. Done you a favour really. Can sort the salvage out for you.

In next week’s issue Marty tests out the Audi A5 Cabriolet 3.0 tdi Quattro SE S-Tronic of Rachel Stow at Thorneycrofts Solicitors.

Quite literally sickened by the fact that the average TPFT motor insurance premium has supposedly risen from £333 (the number of the demi-beast) to £1,510 in the last 18 years, the Mail decided, in characteristic style, to get to the bottom of the matter.

Back in the day, the Mail laments, premiums were “spent on fixing cars after a crash.” Whereas today they mostly go on “feathering the nests of claims companies and their lawyers… and even the police are in on the game.”

Bankstone News could barely believe its eyes on reading these stomach-turning revelations. So, putting aside all thoughts of coffee mornings, antiques fairs and BNP rallies we decided to investigate the matter fully – by pouring another cheeky pre-lunch G&T, lighting up a B&H and reading the rest of the article. And this, Dear Reader, in a nutshell, is what we learned…

The case study/human interest bit

A slightly foreign sounding - but actually really nice - accountant called Marek Majewski inadvertently strayed within the dolorous orbit of “the unblinking Leviathan that is the modern motor-insurance industry” which near-enough accused him of being the sort of person who would show “reckless abandon” behind the wheel of his Renault Espace.

Here’s what happened: Marek and wife Wendy, 52, nipped down the local pub in Balham and “brushed the front bumper of a parked taxi’ as they pulled up. Its owner appeared sanguine about the rubber marks left by the Espace. Marek took a snapshot on his smartphone, which actually takes a surprisingly decent photo, and he and the taxi man exchanged details, agreeing not to get insurers involved.

That, you might think, would have been the end of the matter. But was it? It was not. Far from it. No, it was, in fact, the cue for “an entire industry of opportunistic businessmen and trade professionals to go to work and extract as much money from the incident as possible.”

A letter arrived from a firm of solicitors in far-off Lancashire claiming that Marek had driven “recklessly.” Already sputtering, no doubt, from the rank injustice of this initial slur, Wendy - for it was she who first perused this impertinent missive - skimmed down to the fifth paragraph where something caught her eye that quite literally “inflamed her.”

The Lancashire lawyers appeared to be claiming that the taxi owner had suffered whiplash. “He wasn’t in the car!” Wendy remembers. And even if he had been, “Marek was going so slowly the impact couldn’t possibly have caused any such injury. I was furious,” she told the paper.

When the Majewski’s insurers Admiral contacted Wendy - who was firmly at the helm of proceedings by now - she agreed to accept liability for the rubbery scuffs but not for the injury. The woman from Admiral said “there are obviously ‘more questions’ in relation to the medical claims.” “There certainly are!” Wendy recalls agreeing with emphasis.

And there, alas, we must leave this vivid drama of low-speed South London taxi brushing, for the Mail reveals no more, noting merely that “The Majewskis’ experience is becoming increasingly common.” The which contention, given the enduring popularity of nipping out to the pub in the car and the growing profusion of parked taxis on Britain’s streets, Bankstone News can easily believe to be true.

Some other stuff

“The Association of British Insurers estimates that 1,562 whiplash claims are made every day in the UK, costing insurers £2 billion,” the Mail notes, “and it’s motorists who are left picking up the bill thanks to huge increases in motor-insurance premiums.”

So “why are premiums shooting up; and who are the guilty parties?” the Mail asks, not a moment too soon.

“There are few innocents in this story,” warns Mail reporter Adam Luck. “Ambulance-chasing lawyers with their siren calls of no win, no fee,” (so that’s two sirens, assuming, as presumably one may, that the ambulance will have one going as well at the time of chasing) “claims-management companies who promise to help you in the wake of an accident but also help themselves; and then there are the insurers. Many of those in the car-insurance industry lead lives of luxury thanks to the premiums drivers are forced to pay…”

Fondly imagining that his demagogic oratorical prowess will by this point have set his readers’ pulses racing at potentially dangerous speeds, Luck cautions: “if your blood pressure is rising and you are tempted to call 999 then don’t. Hospitals and, extraordinarily, the police are implicated in this game as well.” So there you have it: next time you think you may be about to suffer a heart attack or stroke, don’t call an ambulance - because the hospital might sell your details to an insurance firm - or you might run into a policeman on the way there.

Read more of Bankstone News’ shocking investigation into something we read in the Daily Mail in next week’s Bankstone News…

Initially nonplussed by this seemingly outlandish announcement, Bankstone News has since ascertained that Ringworm-Hants-based BLD has in fact bought a firm called Altamura Concepts, which - rather than dealing in abstract mental constructs - actually does things with motorcycles, such as painting them, applying decals to them, and even repairing them.

In fact, the closer one looks into it, the more it appears that the word ‘Concepts’ seriously underplays the true breadth of Altamura’s capabilities.

“We can take your ideas” (it gets better) “and take them from concept to completion,” the Altamura website explains, seemlingly reluctant to relinquish the realm of ideas for that of practical execution, but getting there eventually, which is all that really matters at the end of the day, if you think about it.

“We are equally experienced in providing designs for everything from a fairing to a helmet,” the site continues - negligently omitting, you might think, to specify what the extent of this evenly-distributed experience might actually be.

But if you know BLD, you’ll know they know their onions, so Altamura’s experience is probably quite impressive in both the fairings and the helmet departments - and doubtless at all points in between.

Anyway, they’ve bought them now, thus bringing Altamura’s and their own not-to-be-sniffed-at motorcycle embellishing capabilities together under a single figurative umbrella spanning both the piney bungaloid hinterlands of the Dorsetshire Riviera and Camberley’s charming Yorktown Industrial Estate, whereat BLD will gain the added benefits of an additional location for some of its extensive fleet of hire bikes and a capital-proximate staging post in its irresistible onward march to total motorcycle domination.

“Altamura Concepts is widely recognised as the best motorcycle custom paint shop in the UK,” notes BLD managing director Jason Richards, who intends preserving the Altamura brand under the BLD umbrella. “The new location will also improve customer service for direct retail bike customers looking for servicing, MOT and custom paint services,” he adds, as well as delivering “immediate service improvements for our customers’ policyholders as well as operational efficiency for BLD.

So all pretty good, really.

Latest figures from Aviva Family Finances (available now from all good toy and games retailers, ages 7 to adult, batteries not included) show that the typical UK family now owes £7,944 (32% of the average national income) on credit cards and other unsecured borrowing, compared with £5,360 a year ago.

For those who persist in driving, fuel and insurance costs are clearly a significant part of the problem. Consumer advisory body, the Forum on Unsecured Credit is now advising those living in towns and cities or otherwise within easy reach of dependable public transport links to give up their cars if they wish to avoid severe financial hardship and/or imminent personal ruin.

Those having trouble kicking the habit are advised to stay home and invest in a good driving simulation rig for their PC, X-Box or Playstation or watch Top Gear repeats on Dave.

BBC reporters asked fashion house BIBA to ask three insurance brokers to source motor insurance quotes for a fictional office worker and then go back and ask get quotes for the same individual - minus the job.

Surprise, surprise: Broker A’s best offer was Uvavu who wanted a 23% more for Johnny Jobless; the best Broker B could do was RSA, who wanted 31% more; while Broker C appeared to miss the point completely by reporting a 63% price differential between different insurers.

Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert.com said charging people more just because the circumstances of their life have changed was “scandalous” and plans to start a campaign.

But what is the world coming to if underwriters are not allowed to discriminate? Discriminating is what they do! First you can’t give women credit for driving more safely (allegedly); now it seems you can’t whack an increment on the feckless and workshy - who, let’s be honest, have no business driving around on the taxpayer’s tab in the first place.

“It’s a minefield,” ventures Graeme Trudgehill of fashion house BIBA, suggesting cautiously that perhaps those without jobs are viewed as less likely to maintain their vehicles and as potential credit risks. Might they drive around more once freed of the need to be somewhere 9 to 5? Might they venture on to unfamiliar roads?

Ian Chowder of Alcoholics Anonymous was blunter, blaming jobless insureds for being more likely to claim and suggesting they could be tempted by their reduced financial circumstances to make fraudulent claims.

On top of all their other problems - crash for cash, crazy teens, doddering oldsters, reduced income from ancillary sources - it seems motor insurers now face a fresh tidal wave of claims flowing from Britain’s rising unemployed population. Will they ever make a profit?

Not if do-gooding politicians prevent them from rating the workless appropriately.