Mr Philip Webster embodied the old-fashioned, high-principled building society manager. Neat moustache, conservative suit, courteous manner. He ran the Fleet Street branch of the Bradford & Bingley when I and my then new husband went to him for a mortgage in 1969.

We were renting a Hampstead basement (£7 a week), but everyone said buy. We had saved up £2,000, we earned respectable Fleet Street salaries: surely everything would be straightforward. Mr Webster was avuncular but sceptical. Why were we thinking of an old cottage in Hampstead at £9,000, without even a bathroom, when we could get a nice semi in Harrow-on-the-Hill with three bedrooms, garden and garage?

When we proposed a cool modern Highgate penthouse, he became solemn. The price, £8,250, made him whistle. On a sheet of foolscap paper he set out strict provisos. Did the building conform to the highest standards? Was I sure I would continue earning? He eventually allowed us £6,000, at an interest rate of 7 per cent, which would cost £50 a month. Could we manage this? To me the name of Bradford & Bingley, even before the bowler-hatted icons were invented, betokened an admirably tight-fisted, Yorkshire-rooted prudence.

Mr Webster remained a friendly adviser, through second marriage and two further houses, sending me handwritten letters detailing the best mortgage rates (15.75 per cent by February 1981). Then mutuality ended, and B&B was floated in 2000, and it was obvious that everything had changed, and for the worse. The name above the door meant nothing. Mr Webster had been replaced by a changing stream of youthful strangers, tapping with glazed expressions at computers that merely slowed down every transaction.

Even in the late 1980s, when it already seemed quite mad that we were besieged on all sides by clamorous offers of more credit, ie, more debt, I voiced Cassandra-like warnings of doom at The Sunday Times. A dozen aghast faces of Thatcherite zeal glared back at me as if I were wearing a pinny and carrying a dustpan. Credit was healthy! The economy would boom for ever...

Well, I have no further need of mortgages from anyone now, thank you. I even cashed in my old 1986 B&B PEP months ago, firing off a furious letter of disgust at its paltry value, plummeting every six months. My rage at now being a taxpayer obliged to “risk billions” bailing out this “toxic bank” translates into lack of trust in any bank whatever.

As for throwing fools' gold at anyone who “self-certified” their income, I know this: dear Mr Webster would never have allowed it.

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