I read this sublimely silly book while enduring the hideous experience of flying to New York on the quaintly-named ‘People’s Express’, an airline where they wait until you’ve fallen asleep to wake you up and make you pay for your ticker, have no hot food and charge you six dollars for a disgusting ‘picnic’ which consists of a basket containing crisps, a cold turkey roll and a small piece of cheese. This is the new ‘no-frills’ style of flying where you pay the same for less and share the experience with David Shilling: a plane-load of yuppies wearing earth shoes and who look as if they floss their teeth a lot.

Still I did hope that an hour in the company of Mr Shilling and his £10.95 philosophy might give me the inspiration to rise above all the drabbie Perrier drinkers who surrounded me. I hoped that flying the Shilling way might provide some ways of thinking rich while sitting in