I promised myself never to return to Hull. Leaving there the last time, I had the misfortune of having a puncture in the city and finding myself without a jack, I phoned my client.

“No problem” he said, “I’ll take you to a motoring store”. An hour later, neither my new jack nor two cans of tyre weld had helped. So I walked a mile across town to the tyre depo to buy a new tyre.

“Can I borrow a jack?” I asked. “Yeah”, grunted the instore gorilla, “It’s over there.”

So I dragged a half-ton trolley jack through the middle of the city for a mile, knocking old women and small children out of the way as I went.

“We ain’t got one of those tyres” grunted the gorilla on my return to the depo, “We ‘ave got a Michelin but it’s £150”. “Just do it” I replied.

So the gorilla started fitting my prize new tyre to my spare wheel. “No, I want it on the car, not the spare!” I said.

The gorilla scratched his head. “It’s not the same size”.

So I drove home without a spare, vowing never to visit Hull ever again.