Any of you out there use your phones too much? The former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell’s autobiography describes a spanking for just such an offence, although in her case combined with some rather inappropriate technical cleverness:

Mum put a silver lock on our phone to stop us making calls, but Max showed me how to hit the handset cradle button the same number of times as each digit to dial a number. She couldn’t understand why our telephone bills were so high until she came home and caught me in the middle of ‘tapping’.

We were dragged into the sitting room and punished with her flip-flop, which was less painful than the wooden spoon.

I’m imagining the conversation, interrupted: “You want me to join a band, Victoria? That sounds… No, mum… Owwww, owwwwww, owwwwwwww!”