In practice what this has meant is that I’m involved with an annual task from hell called a “client satisfaction survey”, and if, after sending an email to justify his existence, the credit control dude hasn’t got payment from our clients – I have to chase them.

Needless to say, this is not a cheerful job. I’d tend to compare it to smashing your head against the desk, whilst simultaneously sticking pins in your eyes.

Normally my natural charm (ie, pay us the money or we'll tell the journos the truth about your products) does the trick, but during July and August, even my hard nosed approach doesn’t seem to be coming up with the goods.

Here are the top excuses I’ve heard recently:

1. I am positive the payment has gone through. Please could you recheck your side as you must have made a mistake. No, there is no mistake – you haven’t paid us

2. Our accounts guy is on holiday, so I’m afraid we can’t process any payments for the next few weeks. So one guy is on holiday – and no one can get paid. Great.

3. We don’t have any record of your invoice, are you sure you sent it? Yes we’ve sent it twice.

4. We are reviewing our payment system at the moment, and unfortunately the new system is taking longer to install than we expected. Yes, you said that last month, and the month before.

5. Can we just go through exactly what we are paying for? Can you confirm that you have precisely met all the targets that we set? And why is this always the case with the clients you OVER deliver for?

6. We are not happy with the fees we negotiated with you. We may need to reduce these, although this is no reflection on the quality of the work you are doing for us. The soon to become ex-client!