Picking the right rate

I'm sitting with Roger, the mortgage adviser, who has been born without any intonation in his voice but has great teeth to compensate. M and I plan to start looking for a place to buy together pretty soon, so I'm finding out how much we've got to spend.

Roger is explaining repayment options. I tell him about my dad and how he's told me it's best to pay off your mortgage as soon as possible, but I'm more like "live for today and let someone else pay your mortgage when you're gone". He asks about my parents and suggests it's less a matter of them specifically and more the priorities of that generation.

He's just embarking on the Tracker Mortgages explanation when he glances at my bag. "Is that an iPod?"

"Yes."

"Do you ever have it where some of the band names appear twice if you update separately?"

I give him some downloading tips and we enthuse about iPods in general. Twenty minutes later, we have to face the boring numbers on the screen. I'm supposed to pick one of the "products" he's talked about.

"Will you pick it for me?"

He smiles. "I'm afraid I'm not allowed to suggest one."

"But what if I pick the wrong one? Why don't you just mouth it to me and then you never told me."

"I can't."

"I told you how to fix your iPod."

"But that's not illegal. I don't want to lose my job."

"OK. I'm going to talk to my other mortgage adviser. My dad."

"Fine."

I get up to leave.

"He'll tell you to get the fixed rate for three years," he says. Roger's very perceptive for a mortgage adviser.