Never a lender or borrower be.

See, even for us Atheists, the words of the bible, like Shakespeare, become part of our sub-conscious. I received an urgent phone call from a friend, it wasn't urgent to begin with but soon got that way. Money troubles, he had a short term cashflow problem and wanted me to sign a loan form as guarantor. I wasn't completely taken by the idea, it's enough looking after your own money let alone signing up to guarantee that somebody else will be capable of looking after theirs.

Despite my misgivings we arranged to meet at a location half way between my office and his place of work. Right from the outset I knew I couldn't sign anything that could potentially lead to bailiffs appearing on our front doorstep at some point down the line so before we met I took a couple of hours off work and went home to get some cash.

Now I'm not in the habit of leaving large wads of cash around the house but it just so happened that I had some that was going to be used to buy some new camera equipment. So off I drive with a brown envelope in my overcoat pocket with £750 cash in it. I arrived at the rendezvous realising how daft the scenario looked. I explained that I couldn't sign a form as guarantor because it was more than my life was worth if anything went wrong, I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and said, "But I am willing to lend you the cash."

I looked at the loan agreement and was staggered at the amount of interest that was being charged, and this via a company appropriately registered to lend money, it worked out at 55% per annum, outrageous.

"I'll pay you back at the same rate I was going to pay anyway," he said.
"You'd better," I replied, "that's my new camera you're holding there."

I drove back to work feeling that I'd actually done something good, whilst at the same time trying to understand how companies could charge such extortionate rates of interest.