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Why celebs can’t get insurance
I got a letter from my insurance brokers the other day. They're threatening to revoke my scooter policy unless I write to them immediately confirming that I'm not a "television personality". What kind of a random request is that? They might just as well have written "Please confirm that you are not and have never been a member of the Moody Blues" or "Kindly send photographic evidence that you are not a chief in the Sioux Indian tribe by return post".
I called up the brokers demanding answers. "Someone saw someone with your name on the box", said the woman on the other end of the line. "Was it you?" It didn't seem like the most professional approach to checking out policy holders, but I was obliged to answer. "I don't know, it could have been I suppose," I said. "So you are a television personality then?" she said, as if she thought she was Colombo. "Well, I've appeared on telly once or twice," I said, recalling the odd occasion on which I've shambolically fleeted across the screen on the more obscure digital channels. "Well, how many times exactly?" she asked.
How to answer? No one besides my own mother is likely to have seen me more than twice on TV. But maybe to this insurance company that's enough to earn TV personality status? I told her I'd get back to them in writing. She probably took this as evidence of guilt - the filthy guilt of a TV personality masquerading as an ordinary person. Why are they worried anyway? Do they think I might accidentally run over the Blue Peter dog? Or crash while giving Simon Cowell a backie to Tescos? Maybe celebrities just can't get motor insurance. That's why they go everywhere by chauffeured helicopter. ·
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As a young magazine features journalist many years ago, I learned to give my occupation as 'writer' or 'editor', because if I actually said 'journalist' my car insurance would cost more.
I'm not sure why this is the case. I've never worked for a tabloid - most journos don't. Another very small minority go to war zones, but how many take their cars? I'm pretty sure acts of war are excluded anyway.
Perhaps someone might take exception to something I said in my item on 'Used and refurbished confectionery manufacturing and packaging equipment' or 'Paper mills in China' and vandalise my car, but I doubt it.
Do they really have statistics to back this rubbish up, or do they just stick arbitrary groups in higher cost brackets to make an extra bob or two?