SINCE drifting quietly off into the twilight world of retirement and domesticity, one thing that has been drawn forcibly to my attention is the number of unsolicited telephone calls which are directed to Hextol Towers.

Sultry ladies from the shores of Far Cathay, and breezy fellows from the slopes of the Hindu Kush seem to be queueing up to give me the benefit of their advice on the £5,000 I am owed in payment protection insurance repayments, the vast sums I have overpaid on my Sky television account, and the fact that my computer is on the verge of bursting into flames.

There is even a very persistent woman from Kirkwhelpington who rings on a weekly basis offering compensation for a road accident we never had. Mrs Hextol and I have told her repeatedly that the accident is a figment of her imagination, but it doesn’t seem to sink in.

It’s not only on the telephone that the fraudsters flourish; I am all sure we have all had emails from “friends” who have been left penniless after being mugged in Manila or Mexico, seeking loans of several thousand pounds for an air ticket home, to be reimbursed the second their plane touches down at Newcastle Airport.

Or there’s the harassed bank official from an emerging African nation who has been entrusted with the country’s entire gold reserves, which wants to pay into your bank for safe keeping, in return for a modest consideration.

Not an hour goes by without the caller display indicating we have yet another “international” or “number withheld” person on the line, with either an out and out scam or an invitation to participate in a lifestyle survey.

We don’t usually bother to pick up the telephone, but with several sons who spend a lot of time abroad, we cannot afford to ignore international calls in case it is one of them.

Sometimes we go into mischief mode, and lead the eager caller a long way up the garden path before Mrs Hextol reveals she is not in fact a 17-year-old mother of triplets who is training to be an airline pilot, and breeds miniature Doberman Pinschers in her spare time.

She has considerably more patience with them than I do, as when a cold caller says: “I won’t take up much of your time” I reply somewhat curtly: “Got it in one” before hanging up.

Another response I usually find satisfactory is to let the scammer get well through their script before barking: “Where did you get this number? I am a police officer and this is the confidential hotline to Interpol.”

For some reason, the phone goes dead straightaway ...

They always seem to call just as I have a fork laden with liver and onions poised at my mouth, or when I am heading for the toilet to do a crossword. When I do answer, the caller frequently just hangs up, having added another number to their quota for the day.

Sky television seems to generate a considerable number of unwanted calls, often from people who have no connection with the satellite broadcaster whatsoever. They tell me the guarantee on my Sky Plus box is about to expire, but they would be happy to extend the guarantee for another five years in exchange for access to my bank account, They tend to get very shirty when you decline for some reason.

The latest Sky scam was just last week when an Oriental lady left a message on the phone saying we have overpaid our subscription by £200, and kindly left a number to ring for details of how to get the cash back.

It turned out the number was a premium phone line, which cost something like 55p per minute to call in pursuit of a non-existent refund.

When we failed to respond, she rang again a couple of days and seemed quite alarmed to learn she was talking to Inspector Hextol of the Serious Crimes Squad.

We were caught out once, when we were invited to complete an on-line questionnaire involving one of the major supermarkets, in the hope of being awarded a £500 shopping voucher.

The questions about butter, soap powder and fresh fruit went on interminably, with no sign of the voucher, so we eventually hung up.

It was only when the next phone bill came in that we realised the “survey” had been conducted through the medium of yet another premium rate number, and the exercise had cost us £38!