There's a bit in the back of Private Eye, amongst the classifieds, called Eye Need, which basically seems to be a place where people with (quite possibly genuine) sob stories post their bank account details in the hope that altruistic readers will transfer some money with no questions asked.

It's been going for years and there are rarely any other contact details in the adverts to allow you to follow up and find out more about the person in need and their particular situation — just a sort code and account number.

Can these ads truly work? It all seems a bit naive and optimistic to me.

Now one view is that people wouldn't place these ads if they didn't work. Even the smallest ad costs around thirty quid, so you've got to believe you're going to make least that much for it to be worthwhile.

On the other hand, maybe each ad only appears once. Perhaps people see that other people are doing it, think it must be worth a punt, then get no response and never do it again. I'm not a regular enough reader of Private Eye to know if any of the same ads crop up again and again.

But if they do work, who are these people that donate to these (possibly) worthy but largely anonymous individual causes?

And more importantly, where can I get their telephone numbers?