Cynically shameless insurance people will tell insurance journalists any old nonsense to get their names in print. Why, only the other day Mark Blower-Dycke of owl-fronted motor brokers BeWilder, the firm whose print advertising was seemingly designed circa 1974, fed Insurance Ache reporters some far-fetched twaddle about journalism being an intensely glamorous high-risk occupation whose practitioners perforce attract sky-high motor insurance quotes.
I expect you chaps are “up all night interviewing the rich and famous and ferrying them around” MBD told Ache reporters, giving members of the Fourth Estate top billing in an ad hoc high-premium professions list.
Croupiers come in at number two, perhaps, Ache reporters conject, because of the “late nights” and because “underwriters believe the urge to gamble might extend to when they are in the driving seat.” Although the latter concern might possibly apply to gamblers more than croupiers.
Who else? Let’s see. What about funfair employees, or [deleted] as we always used to call them. Anyone foolish enough to put that down on their application form in the space marked profession fully deserves the punitive premium pummelling they’re in for. Perhaps, Ache supposes, funfair people merit higher rates because of the “late nights” the “moral hazard” and the “past reputation.” And, for all Bankstone News knows, those probably are the kind of things underwriters take account of.
Racing drivers are at number four in BeWilder’s back-of-a-fag-pack countdown to dangerous drivers. That’s probably down to the late nights and the need for speed. Plus, Insurance Ache urges us to consider, imagine what could happen “if Jenson Button gives Lewis Hamilton a lift and crashes” after work one night!
Footballers, it seems, are much the same as racing drivers (worse in some cases), e.g. imagine the carnage if Wayne Rooney (£38m) “drives his pal Messi” (£197m) back to his gaff late one night and has a major RTA.
Who would want to insure a risk like that?!
Not to worry, soothes worldly-wise Blower-Dycke: “There is always a price and there is a premium for any risk. There will always be an insurer prepared to underwrite as long as the price can be paid.”
Even for people who stay up late.
“Forty quid a month for the Aston, eh Bond? Best not tell the croupier that!”
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