Bathers raising money for the RNLI by leaping off a ‘pirate’ ship plank, were, this weekend, told by organisers that insurance costs for the World walking the Plank competition had risen by 500 per cent.

But the swashbuckling swimmers turned a blind eye to the madness of the legal world and leapt anyway having first signed a mock consent form which read: ‘Planking may make you wet which could damage your clothes.’

This made me feel better. When the cleaners in this building wipe the floors then spread yellow plastic signs warning that floors are wet, slippery and ‘dangerous’ I await for the less lithe of limb among us to trip over one while carrying a ‘dangerous’ cup of hot tea.

By the way the winner of the plank-walking competition held in the yachtsman’s Thames Estuary port of Queenborough in Kent was a man dressed as a giant parrot.