‘Everyone already has had to suffer the mild humiliation of revealing their embarrassing middle names and date of birth to everybody within earshot while phoning their bank from work,’ said a representative from the Financial Services Association. ‘But increased identity fraud means we now need personal details that friends wouldn’t usually reveal to friends or work colleagues.’

Several banks are already piloting the new security measures with the result that one London office was witness to a caller giving the responses ‘Spoons’; ‘plump-rumps-dot-com’ and ‘glory hole in Rio, but she turned out to be a bloke.’ ‘It certainly livened up a dull day in the House of Commons’ said one Westminster secretary.

However there is concern that with an increasing number of call centres bringing in automated systems, callers will be required to speak loudly and or indeed shout their sexual habits down the line. ‘We had a bloke in the office trying to book some cinema tickets’ said another office worker. ‘And all we could hear was our office manager shouting ‘Doggy! No, doggy! Randy Grannies!’ and ‘Stranglewank!’ He was only buying tickets for ‘Toy Story 3’.

In this particular case it transpires that the institution was not automated at all, it was just the call centre workers’ finding a way to entertain themselves. ‘It’s one of the few perks of a very boring job,’ said an employee.