This promises to be the most exciting blog post about insurance that I'm ever likely to write. However, that is like saying that "4 Weddings And A Funeral" is the best film ever made by Richard Curtis which features a funeral and four weddings.
I hope to spice it up a little by including exciting pictures not really related to the blog, the ceilidh band or indeed anything to do with insurance.
Ready? Here goes.
Car insurance costs me a flippin fortune, despite the fact that I have never had an accident, and a number of years of no-claims bonus built up. I'm 30, so I'm probably outside the "psychotically dangerous" age range for guys. "Nul points" on the license (of course! what are you suggesting?!)
Computer says NO, NO, NO.
The problem (apart from my unsettling knack for honesty) is my choice of career. Tell insurance people that you manage and play in a Scottish wedding band, and it seems to blow their circuits.
"Hmm. No... the computer doesn't have that one. What about 'nurse'. Would you say you're a nurse?"
They don't like entertainers, and certainly not music agents, those insurance companies. There's an impending sense of doom attached to finding out that the insurance people, the most hated of all people, are making judgements about my trustworthiness.
They think I might get famous and do an Amy Winehouse on them. I wonder what *her* insurance costs...
ALL OVER THE INTERNET
Our quest to find a company willing to take our cold hard cash from us took us into some slightly worrying areas. My wife had a most surreal experience talking to someone at "Sheila's Wheels", the insurance company whose name suggests that kind of whimsical impulsiveness everyone looks for in a company responsible for handling fatal accident enquiries.
The woman my wife spoke to, however, seemed to have job confusion all of her own, believing somehow that her role was really some kind of careers counsellor, or maybe a clinical psychiatrist.
"I know what the underwriters are afraid of...they're worried that you'll sign the next big thing and they really don't like celebrities."
"but it's really mostly a wedding ceilidh band called the Jiggers".
"Let me just google them... "
(sounds of big stupid elephant fists mashing up and down on a computer keyboard)
"Oh no no no...they're ALL OVER the internet"
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH. So nice to be "famous". I'm amazed that she found us, just by googling, oh, I don't know, "the Jiggers ceilidh band glasgow". What are the chances?
OK, thanks, Sheila. I think I hear your home planet on the other line. Next?
MY DRINKING PROBLEM
I can understand it a bit...driving late at night from venues where (eek!) alcohol was dispensed. They don't really believe when I say I'm a tee-total musician. "Ha!" They say "How else does he cope with the crushing insecurity, eh?" (answer: I blog.)
Well, anyway, I managed to get a quote from a company called Bell insurance. They actually have "dance band musician" as a legitimate occupation. How validating! Plus, they're happy to insure me to use the car for full business purposes, not just to occasionally nip out to stock up on paperclips for the office cupboard.
The quote? Well it wasn't as much as £700 for fully comp, but it wasn't much less than that.
I may yet become a nurse.
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