Bosses at Halifax have been urged to keep Halifax Radio on the air by hundreds of dedicated fans. Devotees of the fake radio station have flooded the high street bank with pleas to make the “fun banking radio station” a permanent fixture.

“It really brightens up my day,” says 60-year-old grandmother Maureen D’Enbie. “I sit in front of my telly waiting for the Vanilla Ice bit – you know – where they cleverly talk about ISAs and the co-presenter realises that ISA can be synched into Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby”, making it “ISA ISA Baby”. That’s just brilliant. Genius, if you will. I don’t know how they come up with things like that. It really does make you think that despite the horribly low rate of interest that you get on an ISA from Halifax, and the ridiculous low return you’d get on it, you’re doing it for the enjoyment of the advert. I do hope they keep Halifax Radio on the air.”

13-year-old pupil Aasphyxxiaaa Jones says that she loves the “high five” moments, saying “radio should be more like that all the time. All of the hosts should have these big high five hands and they should tell everyone all the time about how they’re giving everyone £5 in their accounts, even though that £5 is probably less than the interest most of them would have been earning, and many of them are already paying £12.50 to Halifax for their accounts anyway, so the £5 doesn’t matter, it just makes it £7.50 each month, but they should definitely keep up the ‘High Five’ thing because that’s just brilliant.”

“My mum loves Spandau Ballet. Each time it’s on, she gets up and dances. It’s ace. And she really loves the fact that not a single person in the advert knows how to act. It’s like they’re really bankers!”

Despite calls for every single person in the advert to be beaten to a pulp using a baseball bat studded with nails dipped in arsenic, then packed into a potato sack, set on fire and thrown off London Bridge, and equally for the ad agency who came up with the idea to be carpet-bombed, letters have been flooding in to the Halifax bank asking for autographs from the radio stars. Even Howard, who was dumped by the bank during the credit crunch, says that he has been “completely outdone”, adding:

“I thought my singing advert was brilliant, but this really does trump it! I mean, foam hands for high fives? That’s genius! What a great way of convincing people that £5 in their bank accounts when you’re not actually giving them any interest on your current accounts, and charging them £30 for going overdrawn by a penny. I mean, it’s brilliant. And the ISA ISA baby bit? Absolutely fantastic. I really hope they don’t close down Halifax Radio – and maybe one day I’ll come back and present, now wouldn’t that be just brilliant?”

Howard, now age 39, is currently unemployed and lives with his mother in a studio flat in Peckham.