‘What?  So I can actually reduce all my debts into one lump sum AND pay it back much quicker?’ squeaks the man on the television screen. 

‘Yes you can!’ sings the girl in the oddly spacious call-centre. ‘Just call this number now!’. 

For the lucky few, probably sat in some over-priced flat in Jesmond, this is nail-file tele.  Not I.  I belong to the growing number of us whose ears actually prick in vague arousal at the sound of such sweet lulling promises.  Make no mistake - the man on the screen may be thin on top, but the secondary audience cowering behind him has a slanty fringe and his arse hanging out.  It’s us, boys and girls.  It’s the buynowpaylatergeneration.

A while ago I was asked to be Godfather to my friends little boy.  As the great day approached, it occurred to me that wearing my old school uniform and a ‘smart coat’ would be shockingly inadequate.  And so, without a ‘tuppence to my name, I set out to acquire a two-piece, multi-purpose suit.  Here’s what happened.

I asked Marks & Sparks if they’d let me take a suit away and pay for it in instalments.  Ten pound a month, say, for the rest of my life.  No problem.  All I’d have to do, they said, was get a M&S Credit Card and pay it back bit by bit!  I shimmered a sudden maroon.  It wouldn’t work.  I already have two of those, I mumbled, and they’re both very upset with me as it is… 

One credit check later, I had a suit, a shirt, a tie, thirty pounds worth of brie and oat-fed organic Parma ham and a well over a grand left in credit.  Turns out, my existing debt didn’t make it harder to get into more at all.  Turns out, it was a major fucking turn on.  So they hung the crisp new suit in a complimentary bag, handed it to the boy without a penny to his name and turned him loose.  And now I owe those smooth bastards a Frank-Lampard goal-bonus of a sum.

We’re the generation that believes we have a divine right to material wealth.  If our parents can’t or won’t buy it for us, there are plenty of surrogate families prepared to stump up the loose change for us.  Only MasterCard, Visa and American Express don’t want a phone call at the weekends and a graduation photo for their walls in return.  They want our souls.  And for the next two decades at least, they’re going to be sharing mine like a broken prostitute. 

Hello, Debt Busters…?