The residents of Dundee are being bribed to give up smoking, according to the BBC’s breakfast programme yesterday. The scheme’s simple – and, it seems, fairly successful. Smokers sign up to the scheme, are tested weekly over three months for traces of tobacco, and if they’ve not smoked they’re given £12.50 a week towards their shopping bills.

I’m thinking that, if they extend the scheme southwards, Haron and I (both avowed non-smokers) are going to buy a pack of cigarettes, each smoke a couple, register for the scheme and immediately “give up” and pocket £300.

No doubt the same idea will occur to a group girls at the local boarding school. Only, unfortunately for them, their Housemaster will discover them as they smoke the cigarettes they’d bought to get onto the scheme in the first place. The customary six of the best will result for each of the girls, followed by a further six for their dastardly plan to defraud the taxpayer.