Let’s get straight to the point: if you live in north London and you want to get your boiler repaired, by someone who knows what they are doing, and without getting ripped off, then these are the people you need.

Our boiler packed up last week. We’d been out for an anniversary meal, come home happy and got ready to watch a Bond film. Only when the toddler’s bathtime arrived did we realise that there was no hot water or central heating.

The next day we went to Lincolnshire.

It’s not fun trying to find plumbers from afar, but I had a go. The first one I tried was booked out for days. The second one said he would come the morning we returned home - in exchange for 85 quid per hour.

He came. He looked at the boiler. He prodded it. He told me what I’d already discovered for myself.

“Frankly,” said he. “If you’ve got the money, I’d get a new boiler.”

Which was all very well, until he quoted £2,300 for the job and told me there was someone at the other end of a phone line who would happily take a deposit off my debit card.

He could repair it, he felt, but rather sensed it would be money wasted. So did I, especially as he seemed to have no idea what some of the components in the machine actually did. Even I had worked out that one of the faulty bits had nothing to do with the radiator supply.

So I gave him his £85, which - irritatingly - came out of some money my mother had saved up (in a tuppence jar) for the toddler, and I saw him out.

I went out and bought a halogen heater and, when I could feel my toes again, I started ringing round to get some quotes for a new boiler.

Luckily, the first firm I rang didn’t answer the phone. The second, Stoke Newington Heater Services, was fantastic.

There was a really nice woman at the end of the phone. She listened, she arranged, she got back in touch. Within minutes I knew the name of the guy who was going to drop by that afternoon.

He came, he looked at the boiler and - massively to his credit - pointed out that no new boiler was needed, and that the present one could be properly fixed in its entirety for much less than what I had been quoted by the other firm for a partial repair. He thought he might have the new circuit board and the other two parts in the van.

He didn’t. So he said he’d check to see if he had them in stock.

He didn’t. But within the hour the woman at the firm rang up and quoted me an exact price for each of the three parts, plus the price for labour, and arranged to send someone round this morning.

A woman came this morning, mended the boiler and even left my wife the burnt out circuit board - pointing out to her that men like to look at such things. She was right: I came back from walking the child, picked it up and instinctively started to talk crap about things I know nothing about.

Now that’s what I call service. I don’t even mind that our finances have yet another smoking hole in them: if we’d gone down the path of the new boiler, we’d probably have had to stop eating for a few months.

I’m going to have a bath.