What are his annual outgoings?

I think for a moment, then tick the “£10,000–£24,000” box. So every year Titch somehow manages to spend approximately £14,000 more than he earns. How frequently does Titch pay off his credit-card balance in full?

Funny question, I think. Titch answers: Rarely.

Then Titch tires of these relentless questions and instead scuttles away to order the PABO Sizzling Adult Mail Order Catalogue from their online sex shop. Titch, who thought he had seen it all, is startled by the voluminous choice on offer by PABO. Many of the items for sale involve pumps and studs and—mysteriously—“tracts” that even the grotesque Titch can’t picture aiding a sexual situation.

I put all the things Titch subscribes to in an old picnic hamper, which I keep on a shelf in my office. Rifling through the contents of this picnic hamper is a disturbing experience. Red blood, pink flesh, green baize. Although I have to say that when I troop around the betting offices looking for loyalty schemes for Titch to add his name to, I always stop to play video roulette. It is terribly moreish.

•   •   •

EVERY MORNING for three weeks I walk the streets of London in the guise of one or other of my personas. I inevitably spend slightly less time being Titch because I find the prospect of being spotted slouching into sex shops incredibly embarrassing. But by the time three weeks are up, I believe I’ve been fair and signed each Ronson up to a similar number of lists. And then I wait.

It takes three months for the first unsolicited-loan offer to arrive. And then, suddenly, I am bombarded. And which Ronson is inundated more than any other? Which Ronson receives the first and, in fact, all the credit-card junk mail?

It’s Paul: the handsome, high-achieving, aesthetic, sagacious millionaire Paul. No, I’m joking. Paul doesn’t receive any credit-card junk mail at all.

It’s Titch: stupid, superstitious, venal Titch.

Titch has so far been offered loans by Ocean Finance, Shakespeare Finance, Blair Endersby, e-loanshop.com, TML Mortgage Solutions, loans.co.uk, and easy-loans.co.uk, and an MBNA Platinum card, and an American Express Red card.

What—I wonder—is Titch’s most attractive personality trait for the lenders? Is it his sex addiction, his gambling addiction, his—surely not—interest in bare-knuckle boxing and Nazism? It has to be something. And then I find the culprits! They are in Shoreditch, East London. And they are called Loopy Lotto.

•   •   •

IN A SPLURGE of gambling addiction back in April, Titch signed up for the Loopy Lotto free daily Internet draw (top prize £1 million). I remember the occasion well because I had to pick six numbers for him, and so I became—on Titch’s behalf—a superstitious fool, choosing numbers that intuitively felt special to me. Last night, as I examined the e-mails offering Titch “up to £75,000 for almost any purpose” (loans.co.uk) and “We will consider all applications, no matter what your credit rating” (Ocean Finance), I noticed the small print explaining that they came via Loopy Lotto.

And so I telephone them.

Dan Bannister, the company’s director, sounds lovely and very surprised to hear from me. He says journalists usually have no interest in what people like him do, because it’s terribly boring. But I’m welcome to come over if I like.

The whitewashed loft-style offices of Loopy Lotto could belong to an advertising agency or a TV production company. Boho-yuppies with wire-framed glasses beaver glamorously away as Dan and I sit in the lounge area.

“Who is the average Loopy Lotto subscriber?” I ask him.

“People who are looking for something for nothing and are into instant gratification,” Dan replies. “It’s not a massively upmarket list.”

Dan says they have six hundred thousand registered players. I say one of them is Titch Ronson.

I tell Dan about my experiment. I explain that my fancy, upmarket personas received no junk mail at all, yet Titch was bombarded, primarily through Loopy Lotto.

Dan nods, pleased and unsurprised. He explains that Titch sounds classically, enticingly “subprime.”

“Subprime is the golden egg,” Dan says. “If, as a direct marketer, you can identify subprime characteristics, you can do very well.”

Dan says the vast majority of all junk mail—be it loans or otherwise—is directed at the subprime market: “The best thing you can tell a client is that you can accurately identify subprime individuals. Which is why, when people are asked to fill in lifestyle surveys, they’ll often see questions like ‘Have you ever experienced difficulty getting credit?’ or ‘Have you ever missed a mortgage payment?’ Those are the sorts of triggers that will identify you as potentially subprime. It’s valuable information.”

It is slightly chilling to realize there are rational, functional people up there employed to spot, nurture, and exploit those down here among us who are irrational and can barely cope. If you want to know how stupid you’re perceived to be by the people up there, count the unsolicited junk mail you receive. If you get a lot, you’re perceived to be alluringly stupid.

•   •   •

THIS DOESN’T SOLVE the Richard Cullen mystery. In the weeks before his death, he insisted to his wife that there had been no secret vices, nothing like that at all. If that was true—if there was nothing Titch Ronson–like about him—why was he, in particular, bombarded?

I have coffee at Portcullis House with the Labour MP Chris Bryant. He’s a member of the Treasury Select Committee, a group of MPs who are trying to investigate the credit-card industry.

“We all know they target the people who are just bumping along,” he says, “who don’t read the small print and don’t realize the extortionate interest rates they’re paying. We know they use aggressive marketing techniques to persuade those people to take out loans that they often don’t understand and simply can’t afford.”

“Do any credit-card companies ever admit to this?” I ask.

“Of course not,” says Chris. Then he pauses and says, “Have you heard of this thing called Mosaic?”

Chris says he doesn’t know much about Mosaic, only that it is some computer program. He says he’s heard that the credit-card junk-mail departments have grown to rely on Mosaic when determining whom to shower. Apparently, he says, if you type a postcode into Mosaic, it’ll tell you if the person living at that house wears Burberry, or drinks Coke or white wine, or whatever.

Then Chris moves his chair slightly closer to mine.

“The Tories have Mosaic,” he says. “They’re using it to decide who to target with their junk.”

“Are they?” I reply darkly. What Chris doesn’t tell me—and I only find out later—is that Labour has Mosaic too.

TORIES USE CONSUMER HABITS TO TARGET VOTERS

The contents of voters’ shopping baskets are being studied by both main political parties to help them prepare “bespoke” campaigns in the coming election. The program was developed in the US where the Republicans’ more skillful use of consumer information to target voters is credited with helping George Bush win.

Drinkers of Coors beer, for example, were more likely to vote Republican, as were bourbon drinkers. Those with a taste for brandy, on the other hand, were found to be Democrats. One senior Labour strategist was dismissive of attempts to “fetishise” marketing tools, while admitting that the party was also using Mosaic.

—Independent on Sunday, February 6, 2005

The article goes on to explain how Mosaic is even influencing the Tories’ dissemination of their message. For instance, they intend to post their anti-immigration leaflets to households deemed, via Mosaic, to be intolerant of outsiders, but they won’t bother sending those leaflets to the more cosmopolitan Tory voters. I wonder: If Chris Bryant was right about Mosaic’s influence on the credit-card junk mailers, what was it about Richard Cullen’s lifestyle that made him seem a suitable target?