There is a man on the phone asking to speak to my daughter.

I have a sudden wibble, a premonition of things to come. It is a feeling I do not like. I do not want males of whom I know nothing ringing my house asking to speak to my daughter.

"Why do you want to speak to her?" I bristle. "Who are you?"

The answer puts me somewhat on the back foot.

He tells me he's calling from a gas and electricity provider and wants to speak to my daughter about swapping her supplier.

I explain, patiently, that although she does account for quite a large proportion of the fuel usage in our house, largely down to always having several electronic items on the go at the same time, she is in fact 10-years-old and therefore not yet responsible for the household bills, as much as I would like her to be.

"Ah," says the man.

I ask how on earth he got the idea a 10-year-old girl might want a quote for dual fuel.

"She entered a competition on the internet," he sighs, already wanting to be done with the conversation and moving on to the next person on his direct dialler list. "She ticked a box saying she would like a quote on her household energy supply."

Very Britishly, we apologise to each other profusely and, just before the call ends, I ask what the competition was about.

"Oh," he says, "I think it was to win a £1,500 voucher for Amazon."

I perk up a bit. "Ooh, did she win?"

But the call is over, and I'll never know. I go and ask my daughter why she has been organising dual fuel quotations. She does, of course, not have a clue what I'm talking about.

We have a brief conversation about safety online and not entering competitions without mummy and daddy knowing about it and never, ever, on any account, ticking any boxes.

God knows, we have enough unwelcome phone calls at the house, and we don't need to be inviting any more people to ring us for fuel, boilers, PPI claims, compensation for accidents we've never had.

Those last ones are my personal favourites, and when I say "favourites" I mean the ones that wind me up the most. "Hello!" says someone brightly. "We have £2,912 waiting for you for that accident you had."

"Oh, really?" I reply. "Which accident was that?"

"The accident!" they say. "You remember! They accident! Now if you could just give us details about the accident..."

I have gone far beyond now explaining to them that if they have such a specific amount of money set aside for my accident, then surely they should know all about it. Even if, as I must always point out, that I haven't even had an accident.

Hmm. Perhaps I can kill two birds with one stone here, flummox the cold callers and teach my daughter a lesson about ticking boxes and giving out our phone number. The next time a cold-caller rings, I'll just say to her: "It's for you."