Apryl gets the horrors - when all I want to do is help you all make money. So very unkind.

Well, I don't know. Is there any faith left in this world?

As part of my rather self-interested crusade to raise innocent folks' chances of survival in the coming misery and maybe rid the world of a few rip-off artists I whacked out two emails about what I call my "tentacles".

The man to blame is my financial conscience Michael Carpenter, who's been trying to keep me out of the bankruptcy courts on and off for over 40 years.

The other day he said: “Why don’t you tell people about ALL the ways you can help people instead of just one or two? There are lots of things we do that you never mention.”

So I sent out something headed “Could one of my tentacles reach out to help you?” The tentacles are other things I have a finger in, if you'll forgive a bit of confused anatomy.

Then I emailed about a service that could instantly improve the response to your direct mail by 25-83%.

It is hand-addressing which one of my companies does. It works very well for:

Charities - especially if you want to look like you really do need money.

Selling to businesses – when you want your message to look highly personal.

Expensive, up-market products/services - when you want to make customers feel they’re getting a really personal letter.

They can even top and tail letters and hand-stamp "confidential" onto outer envelopes.

Then today I sent something out about saving up to 90% off data-feeds. This was actually a lie because we can save you even more.

If you do ecommerce you almost certainly need to run data feeds - the streams of data that come off your system and feed into shoppingcomparison sites, affiliate networks and the Google Merchant Centre.

The handful of firms that dominate this small specialist area charge ridiculous sums for tiny amounts of work.

You can pay up to £5,000 to build a feed and £1,500 a month to maintain it. Fine, if you're a big fat rich organisation.

But one of my companies runs a very straight-forward data feed service. They charge £500 to create a feed and £100 a month to maintain it.

Yes: one tenth as much as these pirates to set up, and less than one tenth as much to run it.

Anyhow, this use of the word tentacles really got to Apryl Parcher - a writer I've been corresponding with for yonks.

“Tentacles?” she said. "The image I get in my head is the peg-legged, octopus-bearded Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. Rather sinister (shudders)."

Huh! Anyone'd think I let a mouse loose in her bedroom.

As I explained to her, "My tentacles are lovable, friendly, sweet, cuddly, helpful, imaginative, civilised, adorable, full of bounce, goodwill and bad jokes - think Sponge Bob Squarepants."

But also think making more money in hard times.