I’ve never been good at maths, and for you people in the States that’s maths plural. All of them. I just did not do the maths well. I was intimidated by teachers with no patience and who could see that I simply did not get it. I never got it at school, but can see the value of it now and since of course.

I struggled to do my homework on the subject. Homework being a bit of a misnomer as we did our homework at school, we did not go home until the end of term or the occasional Sunday. I was like a rabbit in the headlights with the algebra, and trigonometry , until Carter came along. “Get Carter!” I said to myself under my breath. The Carter in my scenario looked nothing like the Carter in Get Carter the film with Michael Caine. He looked more like an escapee from a refugee camp, thin and bespectacled, quietly spoken and brilliant at maths, all of them.

So he did my homework for me, to a degree. I paid him, not sure how, but I paid him. He was instructed to leave in some generous mistakes and get enough wrong for it to look like I’d done it. It was enough to keep the teacher off my back, but not enough to put anyone under suspicion. If the teacher ever said “…that’s not bad Davies”, I’d consult with Carter and tell him to try and make it less not bad. We had to steer an even keel. This was years before the Get Carter film came out and when it did I was pleased to see that Sir Michael was wearing glasses at least, but disappointed that the plot did not revolve around mathematical jiggery pokery.

Carter is probably now a retired accountant who had great success, I’ve no idea. I think he was in the year below me at school. I would not be surprised if you told me he’d ended up in the Treasury. As for me and maths, well we never got on really, I failed it twice at “O” level, not surprisingly. It was not unexpected even by the teacher who said that I might just scrape through if I did not make any of my usual silly mistakes. “put in there by Carter “ I muttered to myself.

In the last few days of financial farting about and the chaos caused by the Unelected at Number 10 and her sidekick next door, I was reminded of how I managed fiscally! She might have fired her good friend ( though I’m not sure how good a friend he’ll be now ) but all I could think of was the phrase “Get Carter” for crying out loud.