I just went to pay in a cheque for £75 at Barclays Bank on Tooting High Street. It’s not normally the most inviting of places; people who haven’t sussed out the “instant deposit” machine wait impatiently in a long queue, muttering to themselves; others sob quietly while sitting on blue chairs, waiting for an appointment with a personal banker, during which they will have their cards cut in half and then affixed to their chest with a pair of scissors stabbed viciously into their solar plexus by aforementioned personal banker. That’s the kind of warm welcome you can expect from Barclays: a long wait, followed by tears and death.

But today, I waltzed through the door, having already ruled out the foxtrot, bossa nova and jitterbug, and was hailed by a smartly-dressed woman saying “Good Morning, Sir!” I cast my eyes around the room, and noticed that it was festooned with heart shaped balloons and heart-shaped signs advertising a brand new low Barclays mortgage rate of 4.69%. Next to the instant deposit machine was a table, on which was perched a model house with no walls and a big hole in the ceiling – the kind of place you’d want the lowest imaginable mortgage rate for, I would say.

Next to the model house were some of the traditional tools used by financial organisations to lure you into accepting a secured loan: fairy cakes, chocolate biscuits, bowls of crisps and cartons of orange “flavour” “drink”. A confused crowd had formed around this table; clearly these items were meant for our consumption – but were we allowed a biscuit before we’d borrowed a quarter of a million pounds for a 2-bedroom flat in Balham? Or could we have the biscuit while we were, you know, having a think about it? In short, what was the catch? Maybe it wasn’t for our consumption at all. Maybe Barclays were saying, look, borrow money from us at a new low rate of 4.69%, and all this – fairy cakes, chocolate biscuits, bowls of crisps and cartons of orange “flavour” “drink” – could be yours, in the comfort of your own home. It certainly made me think long, and indeed hard. But I ended up leaving the bank, and went to buy my own chocolate biscuits, remembering my dad’s wise advice, “neither a borrower or a lender be, particular when it comes to hobnobs, son.”