A brief note on future reviews written by us

When I was perhaps 18 or so, My all-consuming passion in life was to lead a lifestyle beyond my means. I have no doubt that I am not alone in this.

I would get paid on a Friday and by Sunday be hopelessly poor again until Friday came round thanks to weekends spent drinking far too much with a group of friends, then getting overpriced taxis home.

Naturally this lifestyle was never particularly cheap, and so I went down the old road of credit cards and unauthorised overdrafts.. thats the kind that come with a £30 charge, presumably to pay the extortionate wages of some bloke who approves or denies such requests.

Of course, borrowing for beer is unsustainable and eventually the time came to pay all this cash back. This, however, was not really of concern to me.. because I was drunk. I decided, in a quite logical way that I owed a lot, but in small sums to various debtors who were all threatening to have some bloke come over and remove my TV, my magnificent collection of utterly disgusting porn and my kidneys. I decided that these threats were empty, it would in effect cost them more than I owed to clear it all legally and pay the burly morons to rock up to my door. I was right.

It was 2 years before I grew up and cleared many of these debts for which I was threatened almost daily with legal action for, and I now live damn near debt free. Why is this?

Well, at the time I got many letters from various account managers and bank types declaring they were "concerned" and any variation thereof, to note I'd done nothing about my debts. Truth is they could have put "angry", "suicidal" or "vomiting with blind rage".. the fact remained, I had their money and I wasn't going to do anything about it.

Until one day, I got a letter from Capital One, saying they were "disappointed to note". Thie changed everything, because you see, they were disappointed. This means THEY had high hopes for ME, THEY thought better of ME and I had let THEM down. Some months later I was clean and clear and I'll never go back.

When most people think of the strongest word in the English language, they instantly think of the word "cunt".. or at least we do. Yet, that word is really more shocking than strong. Disappointed wins hands down, so I don't like using it.

Yet here I am finding myself noticing increasing numbers of people, situations, events and news items that warrant me dropping the "D-bomb". The purpose of this piece is to illustrate that if we ever describe something as "disappointing", avoid it like the plague. Sadly, you'll be seeing it plenty in the coming months.