We'd never really considered this, but a third of Brits want a 99p coin to tackle the menace of the £XX.99 pricing strategy, which a Virgin Money poll says wastes £11m a month in discarded 1p pieces.

Although around 50 per cent of thrifty citizens save their 1 and 2p coins - traditionally in a huge whiskey bottle having drunk all the whiskey they bought with the proceeds of their last huge whiskey bottle bank - plenty of us just chuck the small change. Virgin Money reckons the total lost comes to £133m a year.

The poll - of 1,250 people - also proved that 40 per cent of surveyees preferred to break into a quid coin or a note than count out change.

Of course, the real solution to the problem is to make the pricing of goods at £XX.99 (or £XXX,995 in the case of houses) illegal and punishable by death while raising the value of the 1p coin to £1 to encourage people not to throw them away. ®

And the IT angle is...

Er. We're working on it, honest.