She was my first client and she was crying. I had no idea what to do. I’d been a debt counsellor a mere two days and had carefully taken her through the standard procedure. Given the paltry sum she had to live on, I explained, I could offer her creditors 31p a month towards her total debt of £12,000.

She asked me how long it would take to pay it all. I tapped out some sums on my calculator. “3,225 years, but don’t worry – just think about it as being in debt for the rest of your life.” That’s when she started to weep.

What I had failed to explain properly was that, far from being a catastrophe, a debt is the start of a beautiful, if lengthy, relationship. It’s not: how am I ever going to pay all of this back? It’s more: how am I going to avoid paying it all back? Because outwitting your creditors is the best game in town.

During my 12 years as a debt counsellor in Birmingham and Manchester, I encountered debtors of every stripe: clients juggling credit cards, door-to-door tallymen and bank overdrafts just to pay for basics, people with failed businesses and victims of dodgy second-mortgage companies.

All were worried about the bailiff. Could he take their stuff away? They were understandably thrilled to hear that in many cases he couldn’t. Bailiffs can enter the house only if invited over the threshold and can’t take away any “wearing apparel” that is in use. Bailiff law is a bit like vampire lore: get to know it backwards, be prepared to act on it and if this means balancing your plasma television on your head and saying it’s a hat, so be it.

My clients were under immense pressure to cut their spending. Particularly on booze and cigarettes. I learnt that if you include your fags expenditure in your financial statement, your creditors will be as angry as if you were employing two personal pastry chefs and a private pole dancer, because they hate anything that makes them think you’re having fun while they sit up at night writing your nightclub bills into a fat ledger. So disguise all spending as food or toothpaste.

My happier debt clients thought up devious ways to get hold of cash once all the obvious methods had dried up; one used to buy a 20p length of bamboo from B&Q every day so he could get cashback at the till – he never gave anyone a lift because he never threw any of the canes away.

Economies are good, obviously, but you can take this too far. The client who spent £1,000 on an industrial chewing-gum-making machine to save money on his kids’ sweets bill failed to convince. Another client turned up with a credit agreement for a chainsaw, explaining that it was cheaper than getting the council to cut down his trees, and could I sort it out at £1 a month like all the other debts I’d done the week before? I did, but only on the assumption that there were few bailiffs who’d be willing to turn up and recover the tool.

Creditors, naturally, harass and hound debtors for money all the time, but the most creative debtors do it right back: phoning the man from the bank at home to discuss a payment plan or turning up unexpectedly at the collection team’s summer barbecue to offer a small payment off their account.

Some enjoyed this perverted sense of power perhaps too much: “Barclays? You’re going to have to wait until next week. The rest of you – I’ll hand over a tenner, but only if you beg.”

Tampering with fuel meters was another clever wheeze. Chronic debtors would try all kinds of imaginative tricks. I met one woman who had learnt how to fiddle her electricity meter by fitting a Benson & Hedges packet into the slot and striking the end with a gas-cooker igniter. This sent an electric surge that put masses of credit onto her meter. She showed her neighbours how to do it, and for a while it was free power all round – until the electricity board found out.

I also had a client who made 50p pieces out of ice; when inspectors opened the electricity meter it was always empty but for a mysterious damp patch.

However, it was often difficult to persuade more honourable people not to pay what they couldn’t afford. Many were prepared to go without food and other essentials in order to repay their debts. One client, a concert pianist – his main debt was an HP agreement on a tuxedo – was so scared of spending anything, the only way he could listen to music at home was to play cassettes in his answerphone, which was faulty: certain notes triggered the tape to stop and then rewind, so he could listen to symphonies only in certain keys.

Playing the part was everything. I’d often advise my clients not to wear a suit in court. If they did, the judge would always ask, with a friendly smirk, whether it was from the Next Directory – it was one of the commonest debts.

I’d also tell people to start worrying if one of their creditors was being polite. The quiet ones are the worst. The louder and more persistent the threats, the more desperate that creditor is and the weaker his position. One particular creditor was so desperate, he acquired an office on a street called High Court and printed the words in red at the top of every letter. And, no, it didn’t work.

David Gaffney is a novelist. His comic thriller about multiple debt problems, Never Never, is out now

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