Thank's Jeroco. I am trying to avoid Credit and Charge Cards which is kinda hard to contemplate given that I spend up to £10k a month on corporate expenses. But I had a bad experience so don't use them anymore. Someone with exactly the same biometrics as me, who shall remain nameless, got himself into debt with Amex having had massive company expenses, his employer going bust and him having no income for almost a year.
In fact, that's the reason I wrote to the British Embassy recently, to explain why the baseline of my account was fluctuating by £10k a month and that its financial position was actually more than it at first seemed.