“I’ll just put a bit extra on for shipping.”

Might you be sitting on a million dollar goldmine?

One of the tightest things I have ever heard of in my entire life was during a stint at an industrial supplies place. We had some farmer come in for a few nails for some fencing project, which we bagged for him and charged the extortionate amount of (why do yankee keyboards not have a pound sign, or why do they insist on calling this ‘#’ a pound sign) 112 pence.

Three days later and cue self-same farmer with a crumpled half-empty brown bag. He simply plonked it on the counter and asked to be refunded for the nails he hadn’t used totally devoid of any shameful glint in his eye.

Let’s just say it didn’t happen. Also, what’s the betting he had a brand new tractor?

But perhaps the Pentagon should start employing tight Yorkshire farmers. It simply beggars belief how they managed to be stung for nearly a million dollars for a couple of washers.

The owner of a hardware company has admitted to defrauding the Pentagon, in one case charging almost $1m (£(oh – could’ve copy and pasted this one)500,000) for shipping two washers costing a mere 19 cents.

Prosecutors said among the fraudulent charges made by the sisters were $998,798 to ship two lock washers costing 19-cents, $492,097 to ship an $11 threaded plug, and $499,569 to ship 10 cotter pins – industrial steel pins – worth $1.99 each.

This would be quite funny apart from the fact that one of the sisters who owned the hardware company committed suicide over the affair and the other is facing a twenty year stretch.

Obviously the key is to invoice on Haliburton-headed paper that you’ve acquired from elsewhere (ba-doom-tish).