At least they won't tell the wife I can't remember anything

The new security measures banks impose are the the legacy of excessive lending to the sort of people who are part of the reason why we as bank customers pay such high interest rates.

HSBC has started texting me when my wife uses our credit card. I haven't told her yet. Instead, when the phone bleeps with the message: "Your card has been used for Dh850 at Debenhams," I call to ask if she minds whether I go out with the lads at the weekend.

For really pricy purchases, I sometimes pitch for the double top - a Thursday night out with a Friday morning lie-in and safe haven from the Teletubbies. I'm guessing the bank offers the same service to other husbands, not just me. But either way, I suppose the game is up now.

The wife-snooping texts are all supposed to be about banking security. But if that is the case, why doesn't she also get messages that say: "Your card has been used for Dh850 at The Irish Village at 02.55am." Or, indeed: "Your card has been used for Dh850 at The Irish Village at 02.59am." It is a joint account after all.

Or is it just the little ladies that tend to fall victim to international credit card fraudsters, them not being used to the 16-digit numbers of the master's MasterCard and such like? Even for a caveman like me, it doesn't seem very fair.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the occasional weekend lie-in these past few months. But in banking security, as in life, what's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

Such security measures are the legacy of years of excessive lending to the sort of people who should not really have been given passports with visas valid for anywhere other than the states of their birth.

The so-called "skips", or those who racked up huge credit card debts before fleeing the country, have much to answer for. They are part of the reason why we as bank customers pay such high interest rates when we buy a house or a car, and why we receive such little interest when we deposit money.

One of the biggest consequences has been the sometimes silly security procedures that banks have adopted as a result.

It all came into focus when trying to reset a telephone banking code that my lender has now made so secure that even genuine customers cannot crack it: Bletchley Park, the site of Britain's secret war-time code-breaking activities, would have struggled. You know the drill.

"We will just take you through a few security questions sir."

The first of which was: "What year and month did you set up your account?" I think most people know the correct answer to that one, which is: "I haven't got a clue. Ask me a sensible question, you call-centre tyrant, before I strangle the cat in despair."

I managed to get the year but floundered at the month. My interrogator was not to be put off: "Approximately, what month was it?" she persisted.

"So let me think. I recall the crocuses were peeping through the grass and flamingos were flying overhead as they headed to the wetlands of the south. So, ah yes, I remember now. It must have been the second Tuesday of February 2004 - or The Spring of the E-Saver Account as I knew it back then."

Silence at the other end of the line, and then another question: "What month did you receive your last card on this account sir?" I did not know that one either.

The tone of the call-centre operator turned frosty. For all she knew, I was a phisher, the sworn enemy of the bank customer-services representative. Her supervisor had warned her of people like me. Now the training had paid off. She had come face to face with her adversary and she knew what to do.

I had not passed security she said and would have to wait three days until I tried again. The last thing she would have heard was the sound of my fists pounding on the fridge door.

When I called again three days later, I had neglected to use the intervening period to research when precisely I had opened my account or when I had received my last bank card.

As Murphy had decreed in his universal law that regulates situations such as this one, I got the same two questions again. I was sent to the cooler for a further three days, a baseball mitt striking me in the back of the head as I went. The howls echoed through the halls of my apartment building.

Security is all well and good but there comes a point where it becomes excessive and at the expense of user friendliness.

How would our world look today if they had this system in the First World War for returning raiding parties?

"Halt there private. What month did you open your account at the Bramlington Building Society?"

"Sorry old boy. Afraid that's the wrong answer. But not a problem. Just trot along back to one of those shell holes in No Man's Land and come back to see us in three days. Watch out for the creeping barrage.

"Oh, just one more thing. Did you know your wife has just spent three shillings and sixpence at House of Bloomers in Piccadilly?"